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AND 



THE NEXT WAK 





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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



OUR NAVY 

AND 

THE NEXT WAR 



^OUR NAVY 



AND 



THE NEXT WAR 



BY 
ROBERT WILDEN NEESER 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

191S 






Copyright, 1915, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



J 



Published March, 1915 




MAR 30 1915 

©C1.A398133 



V 



PREFACE 

If ever the navy of the United States needed 
the intelligent support of the American people, it 
is at the present moment. And it is fortunate 
that interest is now growing, and that a disposition 
on the part of our citizens to force action toward 
the meeting of the needs of the service is beginning 

to show itself. 

■ 

{On one point there seems to be no difference of 
opinion — that if we are to have a navy at all, it 
should be as efficient as it possibly can be made.*"] 
We have to-day individual ships that are the ad- 
miration of foreign naval architects. We have 
officers and men on board of them that we believe 
are the equal of those in any other service. We 
have certain materials of war that are as good as 
those manufactured for other fleets. \ But what 
we have not appreciated is that efficient individual 
ships and efficient crews do not alone make a 
powerful navy. These units must be welded into 
an efficient whole by an organization and adminis- 
tration which co-ordinate their capabilities and 
direct their efforts toward a common end. 



vi PREFACE 

In building up our navy, the public mind has 
been centred too much on the power of the single 
ship. It has taken no account of all the various 
accessories essential to the maintenance of the 
fleet. 

In a recent article on the British navy, Ad- 
miral Lord Charles Beresford said: "We have 
had no naval war that threatened our existence 
for over a century. But if such a war had occurred 
any time in the last forty years preceding the 
creation of a war staff, our disorganization would 
have been complete. How in those years the 
navy ever carried out its duties without a war 
staff is a marvel ; it could only have been done by 
the superb loyalty of those afloat, who have al- 
ways done their best and never allowed the word 
1 impossible ' to exist. The Beresford committee 
of 1909 proved up to the hilt the unreadiness of 
the fleet if a sudden war had been declared. The 
creation of a war staff (as a result of the investi- 
gation) has removed this danger." 

In that same year, 1909, the President of the 
United States appointed a commission to con- 
sider the state of our own navy. The report of 
that board is strikingly similar to that of the Beres- 
ford committee. It revealed a condition that 
astounded even the service. But it accomplished 
nothing. For Congress refused to supply the 
remedy. 



PREFACE vii 

Fortunately the superb loyalty of our own 
officers and men, who " have always done their 
best and never allowed the word 'impossible' to 
exist," enabled our ships to carry on their work 
since then in a way that has, on many occasions, 
won the praise of foreign experts. In the face of 
a policy that threatened the very existence of the 
service, in spite of an unbalanced battle fleet, in 
spite of a serious shortage in its personnel, in 
the face of every discouragement, our officers 
and men have striven, and are still striving, for 
efficiency. But this goal will not be reached, nor 
even closely approached, until the doctrine is 
thoroughly understood that there must be an 
intelligent comprehension on the part of the gov- 
ernment of the purpose for which a navy exists. 
The people through their representatives — that 
is, the government — must encourage further the 
navy's legitimate efforts and fill its unquestioned 
military needs. They must develop a policy, free 
from any taint of partisan politics, that will se- 
cure the development of the navy in harmony 
with the purpose for which it exists. They must 
demand of the navy a policy, for which officers of 
the navy should be held to strict accountability, 
and must secure with equal loyalty plans in sup- 
port of that policy. 

Shall we continue to neglect our military needs 
and withhold that support which alone can supply 



viii PREFACE 

the dynamic force that will make of the fleet an 
efficient instrument capable of fulfilling the pur- 
pose for which it exists ? 

Robert W. Neeser. 

New Yoke, March i, 1915. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface v 

CHAPTER 

I. Our Situation 3 

II. Our Diplomatic Position ... 13 

III. Military Peace Preparation . . 32 

IV. Naval Peace Preparation ... 51 
V. Our Military Requirements . . 83 

VI. Our Naval Requirements ... 98 

VII. Military Policy 116 

VIII. Naval Policy 127 

IX. Naval Organization and Admin- 
istration 146 

X. The Employment of the Fleet . 158 

XI. The Personnel . .' 166 

XII. Evolution and Progress . . . 174 

is, 



x CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Appendix I — The Report of the Gen- 
eral Board 179 

Appendix II — The Report of Board on 
Increased Efficiency of 
the Personnel of the 
Navy 200 

Appendix III — The Price of Unprepared- 

ness 204 



OUR NAVY 

AND 

THE NEXT WAR 



"He that commands the sea is at great 
liberty, and may take as much and as 
little of the war as he will. Whereas 
those that be strongest by land are many 
times nevertheless in great straits." 

—Bacon. 



CHAPTER I 
OUR SITUATION 

A NATION should develop its physical power 
for offense or defense in the same way that 
an individual keeps his body strong and 
healthy for his daily tasks. The nation is but 
an elaboration of the individual. Both are gov- 
erned by the same laws. Each is endowed with 
spiritual and physical attributes. The develop- 
ment of these is entirely in the hands of the na- 
tion or of the individual. A nation that develops 
its vital attributes but fails to develop its spiritual 
and physical attributes is in the class with an 
individual who has grown, through indolence and 
overfeeding, too obese to defend himself and too 
dull-witted to avoid his antagonist. 

It is strange but nevertheless true that the 
statesmen of our government have never been 
able to appreciate the true meaning of Clause- 
witz's philosophy that: "War "is only a continu- 
ation, by other means, of national policy." War, 
by the statesman, must be considered as an in- 
strument of his nation's policy. If we accept the 

3 



4 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

truth of this philosophy we are confronted with 
the conclusion that our statesmen in Washing- 
ton are directly responsible to the people for 
the preparedness of its armed forces. The na- 
tion's policies are in the keeping of its states- 
men. Such policies require, for their continu- 
ance, national force, both moral and physical. If 
the outside pressure against a just policy is 
strong, a greater national force must be exerted. 
National force is, in time of peace, diplomatic. 
Diplomatic notes, ententes, and understandings 
are the life-giving force behind a policy. When 
these have failed and the policy is vital to the 
welfare and progress of the nation, military force 
takes the place of diplomatic intercourse. Thus 
it is seen that the nation's policies become the 
starting-point in all calculations of war strength. 
The statesman must distinguish between those 
aims which his nation can abandon and those 
which are worth fighting for. The statesman 
must be a man of keen understanding, with a 
grasp of the fundamentals of history. He must 
study the history of those nations to which his 
own nation may, in the course of time, draw near 
in the field of competition, with danger of collision. 
Thus it becomes his duty to study the purpose 
and policy of those nations which may, in the 
course of their own expansion, challenge his poli- 
cies, and he must, therefore, understand the 



OUR SITUATION 5 

methods that can be employed to assert his own 
government's purpose. 

Unhappily, in America, our statesmen have 
not reckoned with the necessity of maintaining 
behind our policies sufficient armed forces to per- 
petuate them. They seem to believe that if the 
nations of the world have given their tacit con- 
sent to our policies nothing more is necessary. 
They have been sustained in this method of 
diplomacy through the increasing acceptance of 
the principle of arbitration by the people of 
this nation, notwithstanding the fact that the 
causes of every one of our own great national 
struggles were such as to prohibit settlement by 
any other means than a resort to arms. But 
when this creation of man's credulity has failed, 
the nation will come face to face with a condi- 
tion from which there can be no turning. A 
policy vigorously challenged by another nation 
can be settled in two ways only: either by the 
abandonment of the policy, or else by a war to 
maintain it. There is no more despicable figure 
in history than the man who rushes his country 
into a war for which that nation is unprepared. 
A true statesman aims to harmonize the national 
policies with his country's readiness for war. He 
I does not attempt to assert ideals which the armed 
forces of his country are incapable of defending. 
Under the moral code the true responsibility of a 



6 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

nation is not for the preservation of peace, but for 
abstention from wrong, and it must be assumed 
among the civilized nations that each strives to 
be morally right in its dealings with others. Our 
national policies are held by the people of the 
United States to be morally right and necessary 
to the life and happiness of the people; yet, 
knowing this, we as a nation refuse to face the 
unpleasant realization that we may some day 
be called upon to engage in war in the defense 
of these policies. 

Those who champion the cause of arbitration 
and universal peace, believing that thereby they 
may cast off the burden of armaments, by so 
doing only bring the country they serve nearer to 
the very thing that they wish most to avoid; 
and when that hideous monster, War, is at hand, 
their country lies helpless before the nations that t 
have prepared themselves for the fray. Can any 
man really believe that such policies as the Mon- 
roe Doctrine, the exclusion of Asiatics, and the 
guarantee of the neutrality of the Panama Canal 
can be enforced by a court of arbitration? 

Yet these three great policies of American di- 
plomacy are our policies of self-defense. They 
are the paper bulwarks behind which the Ameri- 
can nation defends its position and principles in 
the world of competing nations. Once this bar- 
rier is overthrown, the very life of the nation as 



OUR SITUATION 7 

an independent and free people may cease to exist. 
Once the military nations of Europe or Asia have 
secured a foothold on the American continent, 
the United States will be forced to join the ranks 
of the military nations and, through a long, 
bloody, and exhausting war, hurl from the con- 
tinent those who have invaded the territories of 
our assumed overlordship. 

In all discussions over armaments in this coun- 
try nowhere do we hear the voice of the states- 
men. Their influence has been directed to the 
curtailment of our national defenses. How, then, 
can they acquit themselves before the nation 
when we are face to face with that final arbiter, 
war? These statesmen at the head of the gov- 
ernment cannot shirk the responsibility for the 
maintenance of an adequate force to insure vic- 
tory. A nation of 90,000,000 people, once set 
in motion against aggression, cannot easily be 
checked. That the nation is unprepared for war 
and that defeat is inevitable cannot be forced 
home after the patriotic fervor of a nation is 
aroused. The statesman who has forced the 
issue, regardless of the unpreparedness of his 
country, may well tremble and endeavor to avert 
the danger so near at hand; but his puny power 
is swept aside by the momentum Qf the outraged 
nation, and he can only impotently contemplate the 
unequal struggle for which he alone is to blame. 



8 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

The only conclusion to be drawn is that the 
American nation to-day is sorely in need of states- 
men who have studied the problems of our na- 
tional existence and are able to apply to their 
solutions organized knowledge, which is the only 
basis of success in modern life. The nation's 
welfare must be intrusted to a continuing body of 
statesmen whom the nation can hold responsible. 
If we are to remain supreme in our territorial 
possessions, including the Panama Canal; if we 
are to enforce the Monroe Doctrine in spite of 
the cupidity of nations that are now ruthlessly 
sacrificing hundreds of thousands of their men on 
the battle-fields of Europe; if we are to exclude 
the Asiatic from our Pacific coast; if we are to 
insist upon the open door in China for our trade, 
then the statesmen of our nation must keep in 
closer touch with the preparedness for war of the 
two arms of our national forces. They must 
stand ready to go before the country and tell the 
people just which policies can be maintained 
and which policies must be abandoned. It is 
the statesmen, and not the military or naval men, 
who should be using their efforts to increase the 
power and efficiency of our nation for the coming 
struggle for the maintenance of our position in 
the world. 

In every civilized country the organization and 
application of its resources is the basis of success 



OUR SITUATION 9 

in war. Resources, when stripped of all collateral 
elements, reduce down to men, material, and 
money. The organization of these is wholly 
within the province of the statesmen. 

In Section VIII of the Constitution of the 
United States the authority is vested in Congress 
to raise and support armies and to provide and 
maintain a navy, and, further, to make rules for 
the government and regulation of the land and 
naval forces. Who else shall decide upon the 
size of the army and navy? If the army and 
navy are inadequate for the purpose of supporting 
the national policies, whom must the country 
hold responsible ? 

In time of war the civilian, as much as the sol- 
dier, is responsible for defeat and disaster. Bat- 
tles are not lost on the field alone; they may be 
lost beneath the dome of the Capitol; they may 
be lost in the cabinet ; or they may be lost in the 
private office of the secretary of war or the secre- 
tary of the navy. But wherever they may be 
lost, it is our people who will suffer and our sol- 
diers — patriotic citizens — who will die, with a 
sudden, bitter knowledge that our military policy 
is a crime against life, a crime against property, 
and a crime against liberty. 

War affects the life, the liberty, and the prop- 
erty of every individual citizen. Beyond that, 
it imperils the life of the nation. On its issue 



io OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

necessarily depend the fate of governments and 
the happiness of human beings, present and 
future. The statesman should, therefore, con- 
sider it his duty to study peace and the causes 
which tend to preserve or destroy peace. History 
teaches us that peace ends in war. If the causes 
which terminate peace and produce war cannot be 
removed, and if the legislator does not recognize 
and know how to create a powerful army, he ceases 
to be a statesman. 

We thus see that we cannot divorce ourselves 
from the fact that national preparedness must 
remain in the keeping of the statesman — that is, 
.the representative of the individual — and that it 
is the statesman whom the nation must hold re- 
sponsible for the development of its physical 
powers. It is idle, nay, useless, to base the size 
of armies and fleets upon local opinions. These 
instruments of diplomacy cannot be considered 
as benefits to a section of the country only. They 
are national instruments, to be used by the nation 
for the purpose of maintaining itself a free agent 
in the world of nations. That the Pacific coast 
or the Atlantic coast is not adequately prepared 
to repel an invader is not the care of the local 
politicians, but of the national statesmen. They 
must consider, in their demands for military force, 
the political situation of the entire country and 
its probable enemies. All decisions which a gov- 



OUR SITUATION n 

ernment is called upon to make are intimately 
connected, and in the relations between them is 
to be sought the continuity of design or unity 
of purpose, which are different names for a policy. 

The endeavors of local politicians to deter na- 
tional preparedness are the outcroppings of self- 
seeking in the nation. Their influence upon 
legislation is harmful, and their effect is to drag 
the national question of national defense into the 
arena of local party politics. 

A nation which becomes so absorbed in money- 
making pursuits as to neglect to take all those 
steps which are necessary to secure immunity 
from attack ceases to impose respect, and so 
comes to be looked upon as an easy prey. It is 
only by making costly sacrifices that a nation 
can earn peace. History shows full well that 

"111 fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, 
Where wealth accumulates and men decay." 

Our present lack of preparedness will force us 
into a slow and irregular transition to a war 
footing, exposing the country to the dangers of 
the defensive and the horrors of invasion. The 
real strength of a definite force depends upon the 
quality of its soldiers and its officers. Yet the 
United States has only one-tenth of one per cent 
of its men trained for war. It is, therefore, only 
one-tenth of one per cent strong. 



12 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

In this agitation for naval and military pre- 
paredness the country should not make the mis- 
take of laying the blame upon the shoulders of 
the political party in power. We must remem- 
ber that the party of opposite beliefs, during a 
tenure in office of nearly a score of years, during 
which our military weaknesses were just as evi- 
dent as they are to-day, often did very little to 
remedy the defects. It is the duty of the party 
now in power, after it has seen the besetting 
dangers of the country's situation, to push reme- 
dial legislation. National defense should become 
a national issue. The party out of power, if it 
is unpatriotic, will grasp the opportunity of push- 
ing an advantage by declaring that the party in 
power is failing to provide for the nation's safety, 
saying nothing of the fact that itself, when in 
power, was as careless of the national needs. 
With national defense a party issue, those in 
power will try to hush things up and prevent a 
panic. The effect will be, as usual, to defeat the 
true ends of the nation. The nation should be 
sufficiently patriotic to agree that national defense 
is outside of party lines, and both parties should 
be willing to bring the search-light of public 
opinion to bear upon the country's needs and 
stand together to enforce the remedy. National 
defense is not a political issue; it is a personal 
issue. 



CHAPTER II 
OUR DIPLOMATIC POSITION 

THE United States stands to-day as the great 
arbiter of the western hemisphere. It has 
expanded, by conquest and purchase, from 
the Atlantic to the Pacific. Its northern border 
touches the frontier of Canada, its southern bound- 
ary is washed by the waters of the Rio Grande. 
Conquest has carried the American symbol of 
sovereignty into the waters of the Pacific to the 
very gateway of China. The Caribbean, once 
the spoil of European nations, now may be said 
to be almost Americanized by our acquisition of 
Puerto Rico, by our virtual political domination 
of these islands still under the rule of tropical 
races, and by our possession of the Canal route 
across the Isthmus of Panama, through which 
will soon pass the commerce of the world. 

We have, in our hands, the making of a great 
empire — not an empire of kings, but an empire in 
whose womb lies the seed of the nation's funda- 
mental beliefs, recorded with such clearness in 
the Declaration of Independence. The power is 

13 



14 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

ours, if we are men enough to grasp it, to give 
to the great world over which our policies have 
flung their protecting arm those principles of 
social life to us now fundamental: "that all men 
are created equal; that they are endowed by 
their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that 
among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness; that to secure these rights govern- 
ments are instituted among men, deriving their 
just powers from the consent of the governed. " 

The individual has no right to regard the state 
as a means for attaining his own ambitions. The 
nation owes a duty to posterity which can be per- 
formed only through the self-sacrifice of the na- 
tion to-day. The territories over which flies the 
American flag, and those territories over which I 
our institutions have spread their protecting wing, . 
are a legacy from the past. They were handed 
down to us, not to fritter away, but to develop 
and conserve. 

With the avowed object of safeguarding these 
principles of government to those over whom our 
nation has assumed the guardianship, we have 
laid down certain policies which other nations 
are called upon to respect. The most important: 
of these is contained in the message which Presi- 
dent Monroe sent Congress in 1823, in which he 
said: "We owe it to candor and to the amicable 
relations existing between the United States and 



OUR DIPLOMATIC POSITION 15 

those European powers to declare that we should 
consider any attempt on their part to extend their 
system to any portion of this hemisphere as 
dangerous to our peace and safety." 

When we contemplate the great struggle of 
blood which is now going on in Europe, a struggle 
for survival, a struggle for domination, a struggle 
for conquest, where the wealth of entire nations 
is risked, can we still adhere to the belief that 
the mailed fist of some of those nations will not 
be stretched across the seas to grasp the vast 
resources, as yet untouched, in the countries to 
the south of us, from the Rio Grande to Terra 
del Fuego ? 

The limited boundaries of Europe have become 
too narrow to confine the people of strong and 
vigorous nations seeking expansion. Already 
those nations have peacefully penetrated into 
Mexico and Central and South America. Some of 
these nations have enunciated the principle that 
it is the duty of a state to make war to advance 
its own ideals and its own civilization. Upon the 
completion of this world war Europe will be even 
more of an armed camp. The devastation of 
war will have reduced the resources within their 
own borders. The rich countries beyond the 
seas, basking under the sunshine of peace, will 
offer them alluring inducements to sweep away 
that doctrine which has been so long distasteful. 



16 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

Whether this happens or not will depend only 
upon our power to prevent it. ... .That power will 
rest with our naval and military forces. If they 
are weak and incapable of maintaining the Mon- 
roe Doctrine, then that doctrine will pass into 
the unknown. The integrity and neutrality of 
the Panama Canal will, of necessity, suffer the 
same fate as the Monroe Doctrine, and, unless we 
are prepared to defend our position in the world, 
we shall all see the day when the fruits of Ameri- 
can labor, enterprise, and ingenuity will be con- 
trolled and administered by a foreign nation. 
Our colonial possessions and our control over the 
weak republics of the Caribbean will pass from 
us because we shall have demonstrated our un- 
fitness to control their destinies. Our trade with 
the Orient, even that with South America, will be 
paralyzed through hostile tariffs. Our own shores 
may feel the iron tread of the invader, and our 
cities may suffer destruction. 

It is a misconception entirely unsupported by 
history that nations, at the end of a great war, 
are exhausted. We have only to look to the con- 
dition of Germany after her war with France in 
1870 and to the military strength of the United 
States after the four long years of the Civil War. 
In 1865 the United States had a trained army of 
a million men. Those men were warriors with 
fighting blood in their veins. Their love of coun- 



OUR DIPLOMATIC POSITION 17 

try was high above the mere lust for gold. We 
had great men and tried leaders — men trained on 
the battle-field. 

But wherein lie our dangers, and how can they 
be met ? The nearest and most important danger 
is in the Pacific. By our own hand we freed 
Japan from the isolation of centuries of seclusion 
into a nation fully armed and equipped with that 
military spirit of which we, as a nation, are so 
lacking. The rapid assimilation of Western ideas 
and the successful appropriation of all the mate- 
rial elements of our Christian civilization by that 
island empire have astounded the world. Within 
the last decade Japan has emerged conqueror 
from the struggle of two modern wars. 

The growth of the Japanese naval power must 
cause us to look to the efficiency of our navy, for 
the interests of Japan and those of the United 
States are, in some quarters, diametrically op- 
posed. Japan, at first friendly, has suddenly 
changed her attitude in the tone of her diplomatic 
intercourse to one not as amicable. Nations are 
no more mindful of past favors than are indi- 
viduals. Friendship between nations cannot al- 
ways stand the strain of a conflict of interests. 

A pr^r^ful conquest of China, and the domina- 
tion of L, markets is apparently Japan's aim — 
peaceful if possible, but by force if necessary. 
During the present war Japan has seized the 




18 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

islands that belonged to Germany, lying at the 
door of our own islands in the Pacific. These 
new possessions of Japan threaten, if they do not 
sever, the lines of communication to our own 
colonies. The occupation of Kiauchau by Japan 
is only another step in that domination of China 
which the Japanese statesmen have long in- 
tended. 1 

An antipathy between races is not itself a 
cause of war. The true causes of war between 
nations have their roots in trade rivalry and in 
the necessity for an expansion of territory for the 
surplus population of a vigorous race; yet race 
antipathy in the Pacific contains germs of possi- 
ble danger. The exclusion of Japanese from our 
country might be used by Japan as a casus belli. 
However, the underlying cause of a war between 
the United States and Japan would not be for 
the settlement of such a trivial matter. The true 
reason would be to enforce the Japanese "Monroe 
Doctrine" and cause the United States to evacu- 
ate her commanding positions in the Pacific. The 
Japanese question may be definitely settled by 
liberating the Philippines and Guam and retiring 
from the Orient ; but in the event of such an ac- 



1 It is interesting to note that Japan's ultimatum to the Germans 
at Kiauchau was the identical one which the Germans had pre- 
sented to the Japanese after the latter had won Port Arthur from 
the Chinese. Thus does the Oriental know how to bide his time. 



OUR DIPLOMATIC POSITION 19 

tion the United States must also give up its naval 
bases in those islands. 1 

There are now only two great powers that can 
enter into a war for the supremacy of the Pacific; 
they are the United States and Japan. Japan's 
advantage in such a struggle is mainly due to 
the fact that her entire empire is not only on 
that ocean, but in the strategic centre of its 
western border. 

Until the day when Japan has succeeded in 
closing the ports of China to the commerce of all 
other countries by hostile tariffs, our commerce 
will seek to compete for its share in the trade of 
the Flowery Kingdom. That trade, once large, 
is dwindling year by year. American goods are 
being forced out of the Chinese market by similar 
articles manufactured more cheaply in Japan. 
To regain that trade is impossible unless greater 
aid is given by our government. No country can 
ever win the trade of the Orient that does not 
make it a national concern. 

As long as Japan is engaged in a commercial 
penetration of China she may not yet divert her 
attention to a further development of the islands 
lying south of her. Japan, like Germany, is 
dominated by the military spirit, which accepts 

1 So far as the Philippines are concerned, we must either abandon 
them or else provide ample means for their defense. There is no 
tertium quid. 



20 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

as fundamental the biological necessity of war 
and the duty of self-assertion. Such a nation of 
warriors will not hesitate to follow through its 
carefully worked-out plan of national expansion, 
even though it encounters a nation of double the 
population and treble the resources. Within the 
last few years the contact with Western civili- 
zation has had a marked effect upon the Japanese 
people. Their character is undergoing a change. 
They are losing their military spirit and becom- 
ing more wedded to commercialism. This fact 
has been deplored by their statesmen, who were 
born and trained under the precepts of Bushido, 
"the soul of Japan." 

Thus we see that in owning islands at her very 
doors there will be many points of possible con- 
tact with this military nation of the Pacific. It, 
therefore, becomes our duty to prepare our armed 
forces in the event that we may be called upon 
to use them, not for aggressive action, but to 
maintain our dignity in the Orient. 

In the Atlantic our Monroe Doctrine has ever 
been distasteful to Germany. For years she has 
been colonizing Brazil until now she has there a 
population of over a million Germans. Whoever 
is the victor in the present war in Europe, the 
spirit of the German nation cannot long remain 
subdued. Even if defeated, it will rise up stronger 
than ever, with its convictions as solidly implanted 



OUR DIPLOMATIC POSITION 21 

as before the war. Germany is one of the world's 
greatest manufacturing peoples. She requires 
colonies to supply the raw materials and food- 
stuffs needed in the Vaterland and colonies 
wherein to open a field of activity for the im- 
mense intellectual labor forces now lying unpro- 
ductive in Germany. Furthermore, Germany 
requires, for the protection of her trade, a base 
in the Caribbean. She has already entered into 
negotiations with several of the minor independent 
governments bordering on that sea for the ac- 
quisition of such harbors for commercial pur- 
poses. Will not the occupation of such harbors, 
even for commercial reasons, be considered by 
the United States as a step toward a more general 
occupation later on, and would it not be resisted ? 
If Germany should be victorious in the struggle 
in Europe, which is not beyond the realms of 
possibility — if Germany were to wrest the com- 
mand of the sea from England — then our states- 
men will have to consider the question of the 
application and limits of the Monroe Doctrine. 
If we are willing to engage in a war with Germany, 
which would probably be a naval war, at least at 
first, it is doubtful whether we could protect our 
interests in the Caribbean and in South America. 
The movement of a fleet across the Atlantic 
would not be a difficult task for her. It is one 
that the German general staff has already worked 



22 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

out to the minutest detail. She would have all 
those difficulties of long lines of communication 
for the transportation of supplies from her home 
bases to her fleet that the United States would 
have if it attempted to move its fleet for hostile 
purposes across the Pacific; but those are diffi- 
culties that German national efficiency, as re- 
flected in her army and navy, can much more 
easily overcome. 

While we should be engaged with Germany in 
the Atlantic, Japan, no longer under the influence 
of English politics, could work her will in the 
Pacific. All our island possessions would fall be- 
fore her forces. America would be driven in be- 
hind her own original borders. 

The United States has long enjoyed immunity 
from the interference of Europe and Asia in its 
political affairs. This immunity has been due 
largely to the policy of Great Britain. Through 
the powerful sentiment of the blood-tie between 
England and the United States the former has 
been able to f ui ther its purposes on the American 
continent without seriously alienating the friend- 
ship of the great republic. As long as England 
was able to thwart Germany in her colonization 
schemes she was content to tolerate the rivalry 
of America and willingly granted her moral sup- 
port to our Monroe Doctrine, while through her 
alliance with Japan she held the control over that 



OUR DIPLOMATIC POSITION 23 

country's aspirations in the Pacific. With such 
a champion as England, our thoughts have 
naturally been turned away from the possible 
dangers to our interests in case the equilibrium 
of forces in the world should become disturbed. 
We have, in fact, reasoned, as a matter of course, 
that this equilibrium would always be maintained 
and that the United States would never be re- 
quired to exert any effort to this end. This idea, 
to the American nation, has become an obses- 
sion. But the equilibrium is now about to be 
disturbed. The present struggle in Europe can- 
not bring about any other result. Either Ger- 
many will emerge vanquished or England will 
surrender the command of the sea to Germany. 
Whichever happens, it matters not which, the 
time has now arrived for the people of the United 
States to awaken and realize the besetting dangers 
surrounding them. 

Let us stop and consider the characteristics 
and attributes of this military power in the 
Pacific. Japanese militarism is, perhaps, difficult 
to separate from patriotism. One is simply the 
expression of the other. The organized strength 
and patriotism of Japan is her defense. Every 
Japanese considers it a privilege rather than a 
mere duty to serve in the army. Under her 
efficient form of government the strength and 
efficiency of the army and navy have kept pace 



24 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

with the nation's commercial and industrial prog- 
ress. The well-ordered organizations of her gov- 
ernment and of her military services are funda- 
mentally sound. No conflicting lines of authority 
or responsibility are permitted to exist. There- 
fore the greatest efficiency has been realized with 
the money appropriated. Her military and naval 
development has been guided by military states- 
men and executed by military and naval men. 
The size and power of her army and navy is based 
upon a definite national policy. In efficiency and 
strength both military services have thus far re- 
mained outside of politics. High command has 
gone to those who have demonstrated their abil- 
ity in active service in war and peace. Such well- 
ordered methods have given to the personnel the 
precious qualities so vital to successful cohesion. 
The Japanese nation is united. Her navy has 
been trained in the school of war. Her position 
in the Pacific and her instant preparedness give 
her the advantage of initiative. She owns no 
outlying possessions which might, if captured by 
us, seriously affect the issue, while we have many 
such possessions lying defenseless within her 
sphere of operations. Her large and well-organized 
army can be utilized to occupy as many of our 
possessions as she will deem advisable in order 
to deny them to our fleet. With all possible 
available bases in the hands of the Japanese, our 



OUR DIPLOMATIC POSITION 25 

fleet will have no base near enough to the Japa- 
nese coast from which it could operate in order 
to control the seas in that area. Yet it is only by 
controlling the seas that we can hope to succeed in 
a war with Japan. 

In the event of hostilities in the far East, then, 
the first decision that will have to be made by 
our statesmen will be: How shall we bring the 
war to a successful conclusion? Hawaii will be 
our only remaining island possession in the Pa- 
cific. With the fleet at Hawaii, and with Japan 
controlling the waters of the far East how shall 
we operate to bring her to terms? This is a 
question that would have to be decided by our 
naval general staff, if one existed. 

A study of the history of the conflicts in which 
great nations have engaged reveals two underlying 
causes of war: one is the control of commerce; 
the other is the possession of the sources of those 
two great industrial necessities — metal and fuel. 
But the prime factor involved in the evolution of 
a navy is the protection of trade, for the safe- 
guarding of which the laws of nations should be 
framed so as to give every confidence to those 
embarking on commercial ventures across the seas. 
In other words, a government should protect its 
commerce as if it were its own enterprise. In an- 
cient times commerce was exposed to great risks, 
subject to constant pillage, and hunted down in 



26 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

peace as well as in war. Nations, therefore, ap- 
preciated trie necessity of protecting their mer- 
chantmen, and commerce became an armed force 
in the world. Even the purely commercial states 
became armed powers for the protection of their 
trade routes. 

But, curiously enough, the great political em- 
pires of the world formerly imperfectly developed 
their own industries and had little sympathy with 
any means of prosperity from without. Their sole 
aim was either to absorb under their own power- 
ful sceptre or else to destroy whatever was rich or 
great beyond their borders. Nothing is more 
marked in the early history of the world than this 
struggle of commerce to obtain security. 

The strength of Rome lay in her legions; that 
of Carthage in her ships. Carthage became the 
greatest power in the Mediterranean and inherited 
the trade of her Phoenician ancestors, and also the 
trade of Egypt, Greece, and Asia Minor. But 
antagonism between the great military non-com- 
mercial power of Rome and the great military 
commercial power of Carthage, whose interests 
crossed at so many points, caused the downfall of 
Carthage and her destruction. At the same time 
Rome accomplished the destruction of another 
great trade centre of which she was jealous, 
Corinth. Palmyra likewise fell half a century 
after the spoliation of Athens. And this policy 



OUR DIPLOMATIC POSITION 27 

of Rome, of wiping out all the outlying centres 
of trade, eventually caused her own downfall, be- 
cause it hampered her own power to hold or 
turn to profitable account these valuable con- 
quests. 

Rome never became a great trade centre, al- 
though the city grew to great size and required 
immense imports of food to support its popula- 
tion. These imports came in the nature of taxes. 
For Rome neither supplied exports nor built up a 
carrying trade. Her contribution to civilization 
was her organization and her administration. Her 
service to humanity was, therefore, political and 
non-economic in character. In the arts and in 
diplomacy her citizens excelled, and through their 
skill in these they succeeded in living on the labor 
of subject people. The "Pax Rotnana" was the 
commodity which Rome exchanged for these con- 
tributions. 

By many the analogy between England and 
Rome is considered noteworthy. England is the 
Rome of to-day, but, unlike Rome, she herself is 
a great maritime nation — a military one on the 
seas. Her geographical position was believed by 
her statesmen not to require a great army. Eng- 
land spread her civilization over the other conti- 
nents, as did Rome. England has organized the 
world's commerce and by so doing has given 
enormous impulses to the manufacturing indus- 



28 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

tries. But a nation, having fulfilled its mission in 
civilization and reached the zenith of its power, 
will decline. This is the law of nature. Germany 
and the United States, and possibly Japan, are 
the modern Carthage, Athens, and Venice. There- 
fore, if England is to remain predominant these 
commercial powers must be controlled. Even 
now England employs in her industrial life many 
Germans and Americans, because they are more 
efficient, reliable, and painstaking than English- 
men. And for the maintenance of her enormous 
commerce England, to-day, is indebted to the 
volume of American and German trade. 

The rapid rise of the economic power of Ger- 
many has shaken England's faith in her own pre- 
dominance. She fears the loss of her naval su- 
premacy and of her control over the commerce 
of the world. Her policy has been to restrict 
Germany's colonial expansion, for she fears the 
rivalry of a more efficient race. Yet her fear 
of Germany is not half so great as her fear of 
America. Her statesmen see the importance of 
first settling with Germany before the United 
States waxes stronger. Once the German fleet 
has been annihilated, then the suppression of po- 
tential American ambitions will be immeasurably 
easier. So long as the German fleet is a force 
to be reckoned with, England dare not show her 
cloven hoof to the United States. Great Britain 



OUR DIPLOMATIC POSITION 29 

must sacrifice every consideration for the main- 
tenance of her naval supremacy. 

In i860 the United States owned 5,000,000 tons 
of shipping, England only 4,000,000. The United 
States at the outbreak of the Civil War was in a 
position to control the carrying trade of the world. 
The action of England in supporting the Con- 
federacy and desiring their independence was 
logical and necessary were she to remain the mis- 
tress of the sea. Much of the shipping of the 
United States was destroyed by war-ships fitted 
out by the Confederates in English ports; and 
when the Civil War was over, England's carrying 
trade totalled 6,000,000 tons, while that of the 
United States amounted to only 4,000,000, and 
was rapidly on the decline. 

In 1873 England owned 43 per cent of the mer- 
chant carrying trade of the world. The United 
States owned 14 per cent, and Germany 6 per 
cent. In 19 14 England owned 53 per cent, the 
United States 9 per cent, and Germany 13 per 
cent. England's vital interest in the rebating of 
tolls to our coastwise shipping through the Canal 
is evident to all students of her commercial 
history. Even without rebating, the ship-build- 
ing industry in the United States will increase. 
There will, therefore, be a cut in England's carry- 
ing trade, for some of our trade that is now carried 
in English bottoms will be carried under our own 



30 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

flag. With the United States and Germany cut- 
ting into her 53 per cent, England fears she will 
lose her advantage. 

We have seen wherein lie possible points of con- 
tact between the United States and the three great 
military nations that are each determined to 
secure its proportion of the world's commerce, 
and more than its proportion if possible. Be- 
tween these four nations — England, Germany, 
Japan, and the United States — the bulk of the 
commerce of the world is divided. Where is the 
power capable of limiting the share of each? 
There is but one power capable of accomplishing 
this. That is the power of diplomacy backed by 
force, or, in other words, the power of national 
efficiency. 

It is not too much to believe that in the struggle 
for commercial supremacy England will use every 
tool within her power to maintain her position. 
It is not too much to believe that England, some- 
time in the near future, may employ the military 
power of her ally — Japan — for the purpose of 
eliminating one of her competitors. We have 
reason to believe that, thus far, England has pro- 
tected us from the military aggression of Japan. 
There is a report that in 1907 the Japanese mili- 
tary party had actually ordered operations against 
the United States — which contemplated nothing 
less than the occupation of the Philippine Islands. 



OUR DIPLOMATIC POSITION 31 

It has been said that troops were already on board 
the transports, and that these vessels were loaded 
and ready to sail at a moment's notice. Eng- 
land's veto alone stopped this movement. She 
was not ready to see America involved in a 
struggle with her ally, for America's trade was 
still carried in British bottoms. How will she act 
after our merchant flag again covers the seas ? 

America is too prone to confound military re- 
sources with military strength. Military resources 
comprise the wealth of the nation, the number 
of able-bodied men of military age, and the num- 
ber of ships available for war. Military strength, 
on the other hand, is measured by the number of 
trained soldiers properly organized and equipped 
that may be brought to a given point at a given 
time, and the number of war-ships fully manned 
and trained that can be quickly concentrated for 
the purpose of meeting the enemy's fleet. Let us 
remember that in 1900 China had a population 
estimated at over 400,000,000. Yet her military 
strength was so inadequate that she was unable 
to prevent 15,000 foreign troops of Europe, Asia, 
and America from marching ninety miles inland, 
capturing her capital, and dictating terms of 
peace humiliating to every inhabitant of the 
Middle Kingdom from within the very walls of 
her Forbidden City. 



CHAPTER III 
MILITARY PEACE PREPARATION 

IT is easily within the reach of every cixizen to 
discover the failure of our military policy. 
Our military writers have eloquently con- 
demned it. General Washington, in his corres- 
pondence, dispassionately set forth its evils. 

It is unfortunately the popular impression that 
our people acquitted themselves creditably as a 
nation during the war of the Revolution, and it 
comes as a shock to know that such was not the 
case. Even with our country fanned to flame 
by the invasion by British troops it was difficult, 
almost impossible, for us to raise men to repel the 
enemy. Fortunately there were plenty of trained 
officers who volunteered their swords, and these 
were influential enough in their communities to 
enroll volunteers. In the first skirmishes of the 
war, notably at Bunker Hill, such veterans as 
Prescott, Putnam, Stark, and Knowlton were a 
strong factor in the behavior of the minutemen. 
But there were many occasions when, even when 
commanded by experienced leaders, our militia 
acquitted themselves none too well. 

32 



MILITARY PEACE PREPARATION 33 

At this time the nation was a loosely knit con- 
federation, an assemblage of small nations, each 
sufficient unto itself and jealous of all the rest. 
Congress called upon the colonies to furnish troops. 
Those that did not feel the effects of the 
war in some cases refused to obey; the others 
grudgingly sent men, but far less than the numbers 
needed. The necessity of a force owing allegiance 
to the United States exclusively, consequently 
became imperative, and Congress fortunately 
heeded the timely advice and ordered the raising 
of Continental troops in certain States near the 
points of invasion. It was a small beginning, but 
this handful of regularly enlisted troops formed 
the nucleus of the army which finally won us our 
independence. 

Washington, who had the power of appointing 
officers, at times was greatly discouraged at the 
unpatriotic attitude of those who sent in their 
names. Companies enlisted in one State refused 
to serve under officers from another State. 
"Many of the officers," he wrote, "sent in their 
names to serve in expectation of promotion; 
others stood aloof to see what advantage they 
could make for themselves, while a number who 
had declined have again sent in their names to 
serve. So great has the confusion arising from 
these and many other perplexing circumstances 
been, that I found it absolutely impossible to fix 



34 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

this very interesting business exactly on the plan 
resolved on in the conference. The difficulty 
with the soldiers is as great, indeed more so, if 
possible, than with the officers. They will not 
enlist unless they know their colonel, lieutenant- 
colonel, major, and captain, so that it was neces- 
sary to fix the officers the first thing, which is, at 
last, in some manner done, and I have given out 
enlisting orders." 

So discouraged was Washington at the failure 
of his countrymen that he later added: " There 
must be some other stimulus besides love of coun- 
try, to make men fond of the service. Instead of 
pressing to be engaged in the cause of their coun- 
try, which I vainly flattered myself would be the 
case, I find we are likely to be deserted in a most 
critical time. Those that have enlisted must 
have a furlough. The Connecticut troops, upon 
whom I reckoned, are as backward, indeed, if 
possible, more so than the people of this (Massa- 
chusetts) colony. Our situation is truly alarming.' ' 

Again, in a private letter to a friend he unbur- 
dens his heart more completely. "Such a dearth 
of public spirit and such want of virtue, such stock- 
jobbing and fertility in all the low arts to obtain 
advantages of one kind or another in this great 
change of military arrangement I never saw be- 
fore, and pray God's mercy that I may never be 
witness to again." 



MILITARY PEACE PREPARATION 35 

But there were so many desertions that it was 
almost impossible for Washington and his officers 
to hold the men. Any system of voluntary en- 
listment necessarily places a government in the 
position of a suppliant, and when patriotism and 
popular enthusiasm no longer suffice to fill the 
ranks, resort must be had to the vicious practice 
of giving bounties to recruits. And that system 
has been found necessary in almost all of our 
military operations. 

If we read the true military history of our coun- 
try, and not the highly colored accounts written 
for the school-reading of our children, we shall 
learn some startling facts of the disastrous effects 
of our past military policy. We shall find out 
that at no time during the Revolutionary War 
did we have sufficient dependable troops. After 
five years' experience, Washington, in a letter to 
Congress, expressed his opinion of our policy 
in these words: ''Had we formed a permanent 
army in the beginning, which, by the continuance 
of the same men in service, had been capable of 
discipline, we never should have had to retreat 
with a handful of men across the Delaware in 
1776, trembling for the £ate of America, which 
nothing but the infatuation of the enemy could 
have saved; we should not have remained all the 
succeeding winter at their mercy, with sometimes 
scarcely a sufficient body of men to mount the 



36 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

ordinary guards, liable at any moment to be dis- 
sipated, if they had only thought proper to march 
against us; we should not have been under the 
necessity of fighting at Brandywine, with an un- 
equal number of raw troops, and afterward of 
seeing Philadelphia fall a prey to the victorious 
army; we should not have been at Valley Forge 
with less than half the force of the enemy, desti- 
tute of everything, in a situation neither to resist 
nor to retire; we should not have seen New York 
left with a handful of men, yet an overmatch for 
the main army of these States, while the principal 
part of their force was detached for the reduction 
of two of them; we should not have found our- 
selves this spring so weak as to be insulted by 
5,000 men, unable to protect our baggage and 
magazines, their security depending on a good 
countenance and a want of enterprise in the 
enemy; we should not have been the greatest 
part of the war inferior to the enemy, indebted 
for our safety to their inactivity, enduring fre- 
quently the mortification of seeing inviting op- 
portunities to ruin them pass unimproved for 
want of a force which the country was completely 
able to afford, and of seeing the country ravaged, 
our towns burnt, the inhabitants plundered, 
abused, murdered with impunity from the same 
cause." 
Such were Washington's thoughts on our mili- 



MILITARY PEACE PREPARATION 37 

tary policy; on the value of raw recruits; on the 
value of undisciplined men ; on the value of the pa- 
triotism of our people. Since then has that value 
increased ? Has it not, on the contrary, lessened ? 
Even with our vast numbers, are we not worse 
off to-day because we shall have pitted against 
us a military force increased in like proportions 
to our great increase in population ? Our small 
army cannot furnish a sufficient nucleus of trained 
troops. The great disorganization and inex- 
perience so eloquently condemned by Washington 
will be magnified many times to-day, for the fibre 
of the nation has degenerated since the days of '76. 
A truly dispassionate investigation of our other 
foreign wars, and of our Civil War, will disclose 
almost identical defects in policy. Tracing nearly 
all of our sacrifices to the want of a military system 
in our Civil War, and the abortive strategy of the 
War Department, General Upton laid down the 
axiom: "that a nation which goes to war unpre- 
pared educates its statesmen at more expense than 
its soldiers." The strategy of the Civil War was 
decided by civilians who feared the power of a 
dictator, not realizing that, while armies are cre- 
ated by war, dictators are born only of disaster. 
Washington was not made a dictator until disaster 
overtook us. Yet this fear of a dictator induced 
us, during the Civil War, to dispense with our 
general-in-chief after our armies had been disci- 



38 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

plined and drilled ready for battle, with the result 
that the conflict was prolonged for four years 
through defective strategy, the blame for which 
we must ascribe to the system of government, 
which, in every war since the adoption of the 
Constitution and during the intervals of peace, 
has permitted a civil officer below the President 
to override our military leaders and bring to 
naught their wisdom and counsel. 

Is it not time that we recognize the moral duty 
of the State to train as many of its citizens as 
possible in the use of arms ? Such training is not 
only in preparation for war but also in order that 
each individual may be benefited by a certain 
amount of military service which unquestionably 
improves his physical and moral stamina. It is 
far wiser yearly to spend sufficient funds for pur- 
poses of defense than to waste vast sums of 
money in futile attempts, at the last moment, to 
avoid a peril that has been disregarded during a 
generation of fundamental blunders. 

Military qualities are not second nature. As a 
nation the American people shun military service. 
The occupations of peace are more pleasing and 
less exacting than the duties of a soldier. The 
individual looks upon military service as one in 
which his individualism will be stifled. His in- 
tellect resists such repression. But military train- 
ing, on the contrary, has the opposite effect. 



MILITARY PEACE PREPARATION 39 

For it reveals to the recruit the true plane of the 
nation's welfare, which is materially higher than 
that of the individual himself. If this could 
only be recognized by our people, the American 
soldier's calling would be better understood and 
the uniform of the government's defenders would 
become to him a badge of honor rather than, what 
some consider it now, a livery of shame. 

Furthermore, our military system must be de- 
veloped. War is the means of obtaining political 
ends and of supporting the moral strength of a 
nation when those ends are contested by rival 
powers. Without the means of waging war the 
nation's moral strength rapidly degenerates. A 
large standing army is not essential if the citizens 
of the country are trained in the use of arms. All 
that is required is a workable military system by 
which we can concentrate at the point of attack 
a sufficiently trained force to repel an invader. 

Our permanent coast defenses are of no value 
against the attacks of a military nation unless 
we have sufficient trained men and modern arms 
to protect them. For the defense of every har- 
bor of importance on both our Pacific and At- 
lantic coasts Congress has* provided land forts. 
These fortifications can prevent an enemy only 
from landing on our shores within the range of 
the fortifications' guns. Their guns deny to the 
enemy the facilities of a commodious harbor for 



40 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

disembarking his troops until those guns have 
been silenced and captured. But recent wars 
have demonstrated that efficient military nations 
can disembark large armies even in localities 
where harbor facilities are not available. The 
United States, during the campaign of Santiago, 
when that harbor was denied us by Spanish guns, 
landed 15,000 soldiers on the open coast without 
a single casualty. A more military nation than 
ourselves can readily disembark several hundred 
thousand men beyond the range of our forts' 
guns and, if we lack a mobile army of trained men, 
can attack our big guns from the rear and in an 
incredibly short time reduce our fortifications and 
obtain command of our harbors for their own use. 
Expensive fortifications, unguarded by a mobile 
army are, therefore, in the light of the lessons of 
Liege and Maubeuge, a waste of the nation's 
money. 

A military nation such as Germany or Japan 
can, once our fleet has been destroyed or blockaded 
in port, throw a trained army upon our coast-line 
within two weeks of the commencement of hos- 
tilities. Even if it were possible to know the 
point of landing, and we had the time to concen- 
trate our entire regular force at that point, it 
would not be large enough or sufficiently equipped 
to stop the invader. The militia and State troops 
would be of no value to us until they had been 



MILITARY PEACE PREPARATION 41 

trained as soldiers. This would require many 
months. Great Britain is now suffering the pangs 
of remorse over her military unpreparedness. 
Millions of men are to-day being trained in Eng- 
land. If these men could have been despatched 
to the Continental battle-field in the first week of 
hostilities, the decisive battle of the war would 
have been fought long since, and successfully for 
England ! But the very men who should have 
been trained during peace in the use of arms ar- 
rived on the firing-line too late. 

To-day the United States is justified in devot- 
ing most of its energies to the increase of its naval 
power, for its fleet is now, as it was in 18 12 and 
in 1898, the nation's first line of defense. But 
with our fleet weaker than our probable antago- 
nist's, should not our second line of defense be 
maintained at double strength? That second 
line comprises our land fortifications and our 
mobile army. We all understand the value of 
boundary fortifications. In following the great 
war in Europe, we have seen what great towers 
of strength they are when used legitimately to 
rest the flanks of an army. The incalculable value 
of the fortifications of Verdun, Toul, Epinal, 
and Belfort is apparent. Between these fortifica- 
tions the allied armies have been drawn up. The 
mobile army has saved the fortifications from de- 
struction, while the fortifications have supported 



42 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

the most vulnerable points of attack. Forts and 
mobile armies are supplementary. Each is neces- 
sary to the other. In the same way, on our sea 
frontiers our armies must rest their flanks upon 
the fortifications which the enemy is bent upon 
capturing. The army protects that part of the 
fortifications in the rear beyond the arc of fire of 
the fort guns. The army drives back the enemy 
and holds it at such a distance that it cannot use 
heavy siege-guns for the reduction of the forts. 

If, after the close of the present European con- 
flict, a great military nation should emerge vic- 
torious and the policies of the victor conflicted 
with the policies of this republic, and if that nation 
invoked a war for the purpose of a settlement, on 
obtaining control of the seas, that nation could 
land, in the vicinity of New York, an army which, 
in two weeks or even less, would destroy our for- 
tifications and hold the city and its millions of 
citizens at its mercy. It is idle for us even to 
consider that our defense would be an insur- 
mountable obstacle to such a feat. Our raw re- 
serves, supported by the entire regular army, 
could not make a "war machine" hesitate a single 
moment in its stride. Like clockwork it would 
advance from its landing-place, sweeping away 
our puny opposition until its object was firmly 
within its grasp. The destruction of property 
entailed would amount to hundreds of millions, 



MILITARY PEACE PREPARATION 43 

and the indemnity levied would cripple the na- 
tion for years to come. The cost of a navy to 
make such a debacle impossible is a mere pittance 
compared to the great financial loss which would 
result from a catastrophe such as this. 

The loss to the country through indemnity, 
through loss by destruction, and loss by disloca- 
tion would amount to a figure beyond our com- 
prehension. In 187 1 Germany exacted an in- 
demnity from France of $1,000,000,000 — an 
amount sufficient to build fifty dreadnaughts. 
The loss by destruction from such a campaign in a 
populous locality like New York would amount 
in addition to even more than the indemnity paid 
by France. And the loss in trade and commerce 
(for from the day the invader's foot sullied our 
shores all business would stop) would amount to 
additional hundreds of millions. 

No military man of intelligence can refute the 
possibility of such a disaster. And this would be 
only part of the nation's losses. All of our coast 
cities could be as easily reduced, laid waste, or 
placed under tribute. Let us remember how, in 
18 14, the city of Washington was burned by a 
handful of British troops. All the patriotism of 
our colonial ancestors did not suffice to arrest the 
march of a few thousand regular British soldiers. 
Patriotism is a military asset only when it pro- 
duces trained soldiers for the nation's defense. 



44 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

Knowing all this, we naturally ask ourselves 
what defect in our system permits us to remain 
so vulnerable. The answer is known already to 
every military student. It is the lack of sound mil- 
itary policy. The statesmen must hearken to the 
voice of the country's military experts. The 
statesmen must be prevented from frittering away 
the legacy which our ancestors have handed down 
to us. They must put away the confusions that 
waste human possibilities. Good intentions do 
not constitute a strong government, nor do they 
produce an efficient nation. The noblest senti- 
ments can never supply the want of soldiers. We 
must, each one of us, urge our statesmen to study 
the problems of national existence, and apply to 
their solution the organized knowledge of the mili- 
tary experts, which can be the only basis of suc- 
cess to the nation. The statesmen must recognize, 
in their diplomacy, the real strength of the mili- 
tary and naval arm of the nation. 

Universal military service in some form is the 
only way of saving the country from itself. In 
America the idea of patriotism is new, and has 
been shaken by the constant introduction of for- 
eign blood. This introduction of new blood is 
dangerous for countries which are not sufficiently 
strong to absorb it. The teaching of patriotism 
should be one of the fundamental points which 
the educators should insist upon themost. The 



MILITARY PEACE PREPARATION 45 

educators, especially those who teach the child, 
must always remember that it is patriotism tjiat 
must dominate in order to inspire in the child a 
great admiration for his own country. We must 
insist that the teachers of our children do not ex- 
pound doctrines harmful to the nation. A teacher 
is free to be a peace man, an antimilitarist, or 
an antipatriot if he chooses, but at school he 
must be silent upon these subjects. If he re- 
fuses to be silent, he should be at once removed. 
The effect upon the masses of those who harp 
upon antimilitarism and antipatriotism is almost 
as disastrous to the nation as its effect upon the 
growing child. This Utopian dream of a world 
confederation and the banishment of national 
competition and war addresses itself to the in- 
stinctive reflexes of a man or woman, to the spirit 
of self-preservation not of the nation but of the 
individual. The proletariat, until it has been 
taught, cannot conceive of such an indefinite 
entity as a nation. If our teachers are allowed to 
instruct our children that defeat is of small in- 
terest to their future, and that to fight is not good 
for them personally, then they will no longer 
fight when the national safety is menaced. Those 
who teach the masses that the good of the indi- 
vidual is higher than the good of the nation teach 
a lesson of cowardice that introduces egotism. 
A nation can live only if its citizens possess ideas 



46 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

in common, and the idea of patriotism is the most 
powerful one for cementing a people together. 
Militarism may be a relative evil. In its extreme 
it is dangerous and ruinous to resources, but 
there would be a still greater danger to the soul 
of the people if we attempted to repress patriot- 
ism. The police are very costly to maintain, yet 
no one talks of dispensing with them. 

Probably nothing at this moment is more dan- 
gerous to the future of America than the many 
speeches that are made by never-right philan- 
thropists upon disarmament and universal peace. 
If we followed their advice our patriotism would 
be entirely destroyed. We should be left at the 
mercy of adversaries who have not disarmed. 
Let us rather wait before disarming until we know 
that we have no enemies in the world. 

Universal military training should have as its 
aim the development of moral qualities in the in- 
dividual — such qualities as attention, reflection, 
judgment, and initiative. How seldom we find 
these qualities among our masses and yet how 
frequently they are encountered among those who, 
whatever their origin, have been trained as sol- 
diers or sailors! There are other qualities which 
military training can produce, the most important 
of which are submission to discipline, a spirit of 
solidarity, perseverance against difficulties, and a 
will to succeed. These qualities cannot be acquired 



MILITARY PEACE PREPARATION 47 

from books, but only from experience, and their 
development results only from their exercise. 
We obey the laws of the community because the 
strong arm of justice compels us to. As a nation 
we can do right only when the habit of doing 
right and avoiding wrong has been learned by 
the nation and becomes a subconscious act. By 
training the individual, by making him subcon- 
sciously choose the right, the nation composed of 
individuals will subconsciously act according to 
the principles of righteousness. Military train- 
ing will teach the individual to govern himself and 
have a respect for duty. This military training 
for the defense of the nation will create senti- 
ments in common and, above all, an ideal in com- 
mon. Moral rules will be appreciated and ad- 
mitted to be fundamental. A nation cannot 
build its hopes on reason. " Human reason has 
only served to build fragile edifices which fall in 
ruins before they are finished. It has built noth- 
ing solid, but has shaken everything. People 
who have trusted in reason believe no longer in 
their gods, in their traditions, or in their principles. 
They believe, to no greater"extent, in their chiefs, 
and they overturn them as soon as they have ac- 
claimed them. Not possessing in any degree the 
direction of possibilities and realities, they live 
more and more in the unfeasible and the unreal, 
following continually delusive chimeras." How 



48 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

strikingly this reminds us of our times! Popular 
heroes scarcely rise in prominence before they are 
overthrown. 

Of necessity, the ideal in whose defense a na- 
tion should exert itself is always a child of tradi- 
tion and never the offspring of will. An ideal 
cannot be created by human will, and we must 
accept it without argument. The idea of "coun- 
try" cannot be created by our wills, and we must 
accept it without argument. This idea of "coun- 
try" represents, with us, a heritage of sentiments, 
of traditions, of thoughts, of common interests. 
To cherish and defend this idea must be learned 
in our childhood. It is this idea in a nation that 
makes it strong, vigorous, progressive. Lacking 
this idea makes it weak, spineless, and leads to 
its destruction. 

The general indifference of our people toward 
national defense, the size and effectiveness of then- 
army and navy, is the result of a blind confidence 
in fate, which the faulty training in the schools 
fosters. If the children of the nation could know 
that in every war in which the country has en- 
gaged our untrained soldiers broke and ran at 
almost the first shot, while our trained soldiers 
challenged the admiration of the world by their 
steadfast courage; if the children could be told 
that our wars have been enormously protracted 
by the lack of sufficient trained forces in the be- 



MILITARY PEACE PREPARATION 49 

ginning to take the initiative; if it could be im- 
pressed upon them that hundreds of thousands of 
our women were made widows, and children or- 
phans, and that millions of men were crippled for 
life because they were sent to the battle-fields un- 
prepared, knowing nothing of what awaited them 
there, with officers as ignorant and incompetent 
in military duties as the soldiers themselves; if 
our children could be shown that $1,000,000 in 
preparation before any of our wars would have 
saved $50,000,000 later — if all this could be done, 
then indifference to the nation's safety would 
immediately cease. 

Where is the historian who will write the real 
history of our past and point out to our children 
the lessons so bitterly forgotten by this nation? 
Who will tell them that the superb isolation 
which was once our protection is no more; that 
in these days of great fleets of swift merchantmen 
an army can be moved by sea even faster than by 
land, and that we owe our immunity from attack 
not to the enemy's fear of our latent strength but 
to the international jealousies and mutual dis- 
trust of those nations that Hesire to challenge our 
commercial supremacy and our political control 
over the American continent ? Who will tell our 
children that, despite arbitration treaties and 
treaties to gain time, some day, not far in 
the future, that challenge will come? The uni- 



So OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

versal law must be obeyed. Already Europe and 
Asia are hungry. If we are to maintain our posi- 
tion in the world and acquit ourselves with honor, 
it cannot be done by written peace doctrines or 
by training one-half of one per cent of our peo- 
ple to oppose millions of trained soldiers. Who, 
in the most forcible language that can be written, 
will tell our children to pluck from their hearts 
that deep-seated belief that somehow we could 
beat off any force that could be thrown against 
us? This faulty tradition held to so doggedly 
by the American nation will be its undoing if it 
be not eradicated from our national thought. 



CHAPTER IV 

NAVAL PEACE PREPARATION 

MODERN history has shown us the neces- 
sity for the instant preparedness not only 
of our land forces but also of our navy. 
How rapidly in these days of rapid transportation 
and of quick information a nation is hurried from 
the blessings of peace to the horrors of war the 
experience of the last few years has brought home. 
A nation is given no time to collect its fleet, to 
repair it, to dock its ships, to call in its reserves 
(if it has any), to fill up the complements of the 
personnel. 1 Time spent in placing in commission 
reserve ships is time lost. The opportunity for 
target practice and training is past. Even the 
time required to collect the necessary auxiliary 

• 

1 "We have no reserve and never have had one," the secretary of 
the navy recently wrote to the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs, 
in urging a small appropriation to perfect the organization of one. 
"We are turning out every year into civil life 3,000 to 4,000 highly 
trained men, who, if organized, would be ready on short notice to 
man our battleships, armored cruisers, and other naval vessels in 
reserve, and supplement the crews of the battleships of the fleet in 
case of war. No nation keeps in regular service in time of peace 
sufficient men to man all its fighting vessels, but there is none that 

Si 



52 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

vessels, which our fleet now lacks, may not be 
given by a ready opponent. All these are peace 
preparations that should be attended to in ad- 
vance of the declaration of war. The fleet is an 
instrument that should always be ready. Its 
plans of campaign should be prepared and known 
to those of its officers upon whom the responsi- 
bility of success or failure in time of emergency 
rests. Its administration during peace is not, 
therefore, a civil concern but a military one. The 
disposition of the ships, their training, the times 
for their repairs and docking, or, more compre- 
hensively, the entire work of the fleet should, 
in consequence, be outlined and decided by 
the naval officers who will be called upon to 
fight it. 

From the beginning, one hundred and forty 
years ago, the navy has been the willing and 
faithful subordinate of the civil power and the 
indispensable instrument of the American people 
for carrying into effect their national policy as 
expressed by their chosen representatives in Con- 
does not provide for a trained reserve. The enlisted men of the 
navy have been for years urging upon Congress and the department 
the passage of legislation which will permit of their retirement upon 
graded rates of^pay for certain periods of service. This measure will 
accomplish what they want and at the same time give the country 
a claim on their services as well as provide for the much-needed 
reserve." 

This recommendation, most fortunately, was favorably acted 
upon by Congress only a few days ago. 



NAVAL PEACE PREPARATION 53 

gress. That control of national policy lies in the 
hands of our statesmen. The fleet, with its ships 
and its bases, is the means to the end. Once 
the statesmen have invoked war to continue the 
policy of the government, they call upon the 
military to act. From that time forward an in- 
strument is called into the service of diplomacy 
which requires knowledge outside of the states- 
man's art. Its mastery requires a life study. 
The statesmen indicate the end to be attained — 
that is a function of the State — but the method of 
using that force to accomplish the end requires 
expert knowledge beyond the knowledge of the 
statesman. The statesmen continue to control 
the course of the war in so far as its development 
affects the nation's policies with the enemy or 
with other countries. They must stand ready 
to open negotiations whenever they feel that by 
so doing their country will be benefited. When- 
ever a statesman at the head of the administra- 
tion of our military departments assumes that 
his position gives him the right of making military 
decisions, he materially weakens the efficiency 
of that instrument of power which he should 
consider it his duty to increase. Even during 
the years of peace the same principles of conduct 
for the statesmen and civil administrators hold 
good. The creation of the instruments of force, 
their number and character, the location and 



54 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

equipment of naval bases, the number of sailors 
required to man the fleet, the employment and 
training of the fleet, the military administration 
and up-keep of the fleet, together with all those 
things upon which the fleet is dependent — all 
these are functions which the military must per- 
form. Untechnical civilian influence over any 
of these functions must, in the end, prove dis- 
astrous. 

The civilian brings to his council the idea of 
economy. His training in civil life, in mercantile 
pursuits, where the object of all business is finan- 
cial gain, has warped his mind to a worship of 
economy. To him military efficiency has no 
meaning. His attitude is a material one. When 
forced to decide between several articles of ma- 
terial, all of which in his unscientific eye appear 
equally efficient, his decision naturally will go 
to the one in which the least money is involved. 
In consequence the article accepted by him may 
be totally unserviceable to the military require- 
ment. The military man, on the other hand, 
takes no thought of the cost where efficiency is 
at stake. For him there is no second best. One 
gun that will reach the enemy is worth a hundred 
whose range is just too short. A million dollars 
spent where military necessity demands may save 
a hundred million when war is declared. All 
such questions are military ones, and where 



NAVAL PEACE PREPARATION 55 

these are involved the military decision alone 
should be considered. 

Naval ships are built each for its peculiar role 
in the service of the nation. Battleships, cruisers, 
scouts, destroyers, and submarines should be 
called upon to perform only those duties which 
will perfect their training as instruments of war. 
Their organization and service should be con- 
trolled solely by military minds. These ships 
should not be scattered or dispersed on diplo- 
matic service. Their power lies in unity of 
action and in co-ordinate training. Their func- 
tion is battle and the preparation for battle. 
They should always be kept in the pink of con- 
dition, fully manned and trained for the object 
for which they alone owe their existence. The 
statesman's control over this force should be only 
to unleash it against an enemy's fleet for the 
purpose of emphasizing the national will. The 
peace duty of representing the nation on a foreign 
coast belongs to gunboats, the non-military units 
of the fleet, which should be built for that sole 
purpose. Such vessels may carry few guns and 
small crews, but the emblem of nationality flying 
at their flagstafTs is, nevertheless, still the em- 
bodiment of the diplomatic and military power 
of the nation. Such a representative in a foreign 
port carries with it the same quantity of prestige 
as the entire fleet, were it there assembled. It 



56 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

is a mistaken idea of our diplomacy that a pur- 
pose can be better accentuated with many ships 
of war than with one. Such a conception reveals 
only a glaring weakness in a diplomacy, pointing 
to the hope of avoiding more drastic measures 
by the use of a great show of force. If diplomacy 
has proved its strength and its determination of 
purpose, then the sending of one gunboat will be 
sufficient to announce that our diplomacy calls 
for certain action, which, if refused, will lead to 
acts of coercion that will impose the dictum. 
Keeping the battle fleet as a unit at its work of 
preparation strengthens the hands of diplomacy; 
scattering it, using the units on eccentric mis- 
sions, destroys the unity and cohesiveness of the 
fleet as an instrument of war. 

This is a point of view which the naval officer 
often finds it most difficult to explain to the 
civilian. Between him and his civilian friends 
there lies a great gulf which neither seems able 
to bridge. Each apparently thinks in a different 
language. Words and phrases do not convey 
the same meaning to each of them. It has been 
repeatedly asserted by some of our naval officers 
for many years, and with more emphasis during 
the last two years, that the navy was not pre- 
pared for war. The civilian looked at the naval 
list and at the types and numbers of ships, he 
considered our great navy-yards, and refused to 



NAVAL PEACE PREPARATION 57 

believe that the naval man was in earnest. He 
then went aboard a battleship, he observed the 
officers and men at work; he saw the marvellous 
organization that exists on board our ships of 
war; he made a cruise in a single ship or with 
the fleet; he noted the precision with which the 
ships kept position and the ease with which the 
ships were handled in manoeuvres, and then he 
came to the conclusion that the naval man is 
wrong and belittled the efficiency of his own 
instruments. 

But the naval man knows. He has studied 
and observed the work of other nations. He 
knows that, while we have the ships, the other 
nations not only have them also but use them 
legitimately in preparation for war. He appre- 
ciates that the foreign governments make appro- 
priations each year for mobilizations and for 
manoeuvres in which each type falls into the place 
that it would actually occupy in war. He knows 
that his country will spend the money to build 
ships, and to partially man. them, but that it be- 
grudges the money for the training essential to 
make them proficient in the art of fighting an 
enemy's fleet. He knows that while other na- 
tions have created general staffs, whose sole care 
is the making of plans and directing of the peace 
administration and training of the fleet, that in 
his own country this most technical and neces- 



58 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

sary work, when it is done at all, is usually directed 
by civilian control. 1 He knows that military ad- 
vice upon the use of the fleet, upon the prepara- 
tion of the fleet, upon the training of the fleet, 
although given, is not always accepted. 

What we civilians do not seem to appreciate is 
that the naval men have more than a personal 
interest in the navy. They have a personal in- 
terest in the welfare of their country which the 
navy alone can protect. The ban of secrecy has 
prevented them from openly expressing their full 
views. Occasionally, an anonymous writer dares 
to raise his voice against the methods of naval 
control. His criticisms are honest, and usually 
reflect the unanimous opinion of his colleagues. 
The mouthpiece of the navy — the United States 
Naval Institute — has published article after article 
condemning our naval administration as faulty 

1 The General Board of the Navy has the supervision of the mak- 
ing of war plans, but as it has no legal status or executive power, 
it can neither compel action nor interest the "civilian control" to 
understand them and take the action necessary. The civilian secre- 
tary of the navy, thanks to our faulty system of administration, is 
left in a state of complete isolation as regards the general manage- 
ment of the navy at large. There exists, as Secretary Moody testi- 
fied before the Naval Committee of the House, on April n, 1904, 
"no body charged with the duty of giving responsible advice upon 
military matters." "It is not enough," he added, " that there should 
be plenty of officers ready to give him advice when he seeks it. 
There should be those charged expressly with the duty of studying 
military questions, and of giving advice for which they can be held 
responsible." What this "defect in a vital part" of our naval ad- 
ministration is, will be shown further on. 



NAVAL PEACE PREPARATION S9 

in principle, disastrous to the efficiency of the 
navy, and dangerous to the welfare of the nation. 
The civil administrators, whenever they feel that 
they have been personally attacked, defend them- 
selves by appealing to our form of government, 
which, according to their statements, provides for 
civilian control over the military. But such 
statements are only true in the wording and not 
in the intention of our form of government. 

Our government reflects the will of the people. 
Our people are civilized and scientific in their 
commercial dealings. If our citizens would stop 
and consider that one like themselves, untrained 
and uneducated in naval matters, was making 
far-reaching military decisions; that, in fact, he 
held in his hand the military direction of our navy, 
with all that goes with it, he would be aghast and 
doubtless tremble for the future of the nation in 
case it went to war., The spirit of our govern- 
ment requires a civilian at the head of the Navy 
Department to administer the financial expendi- 
tures allotted to the service by Congress. 1 That 

1 "It has been asserted," wrote Admiral Luce a few years ago, 
" that a naval officer of rank and experience should be placed at the 
head of the navy. But naval officers are not fitted by training or 
habits of thought for making good ministers of state. This is well 
illustrated by the experience in England, where the civilian First 
Lord, assisted by naval men, has proved the ideal. From the ex- 
perience of the greatest naval power of the day, we are, therefore, 
led to conclude that a civilian secretary of the navy, assisted by a 
board of naval officers, is the main point in a naval administration 
that will stand the test of a great war." 



60 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

civilian should bring to the Navy Department a 
knowledge of business methods. The business ad- 
ministration of the Navy Department is in his 
hands. He is intrusted by the nation with this 
great instrument of force, and the nation will ex- 
pect him to render an account of his stewardship. 
The ultimate test of his success in war will be in 
the exploits of the fleet. If he is truly honest with 
himself and big enough to acknowledge that 
there is a great field of effort beyond his mental 
capabilities, through no fault of his own, he will, 
as any man would upon whom has been thrust 
a great responsibility, surround himself with men 
of known integrity and ability to direct those 
parts of his organization to which his knowledge 
does not extend. These men would further sur- 
round themselves with men whose knowledge 
was more minute in the collateral branches of the 
naval profession. In this way in the office of the 
civil administrator of the navy would be formed 
what is termed in Europe a general staff. 

Our navy, in time of peace, is kept at peace 
strength. For the purposes of war, either in the 
Atlantic or in the Pacific, a great increase of our 
fleet would be necessary. There would have to 
be purchased, or chartered, merchant ships, col- 
liers, oilers, supply vessels, ammunition ships, 
tenders, mother ships, hospital ships, mine-laying 
ships, and trawlers for mine-sweeping. Many of 



NAVAL PEACE PREPARATION 61 

these vessels would be ready for immediate use, 
but some would require conversion for their new 
military duties. It has been found that, in order 
to supply these auxiliary vessels to the number 
and kind required for an oversea campaign, 80 
per cent of the American merchant marine on 
the Atlantic and Pacific would have to be im- 
pressed on the outbreak of hostilities. The ac- 
quisition of all these vessels by the government 
would completely paralyze our coastwise traffic 
and decrease the efficiency of the nation in its 
manufacturing and commercial activities during 
the continuance of military operations. If the 
war is in the Pacific the transcontinental railroads 
will have to utilize their fuel-carrying facilities 
to the utmost to carry the navy's fuel from the 
great coal and oil fields of the east to the Pacific 
slope. Foreign merchant vessels might be bought 
by the government in large numbers, but their 
purchase would have to be completed before the 
declaration of war, and, besides, under our form 
of government no funds would be available for 
such purpose until actually appropriated by Con- 
gress. After the declaration of war no neutral 
country would permit its citizens to sell merchant 
vessels for war purposes to a belligerent. A 
workable scheme must, therefore, be prepared 
and prepared immediately to furnish the fleet 
with this required quota of auxiliary ships, and, 



62 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

at the same time, secure the nation's coastwise 
trade to the purposes of the nation. This vast 
field requires a study by both military and com- 
mercial men for its successful accomplishment. 

The responsibility for the preparation of this 
necessary means of prosecuting a naval war rests, 
in the meantime, with the navy. It would be 
the duty of a naval general staff, did we have 
one. The broad field of naval mobilization must 
be scientifically investigated. Investigation by 
independent individuals or by the Navy Depart- 
ment bureaus working within themselves may 
accomplish a result, but it will be dearly bought 
and at the expense of the fleet. We must bring 
to this study a concentration of effort. The 
work already accomplished by others should 
be co-ordinated under a responsible military 
leader. The entire plan of mobilization must be 
understood through all its ramifications by the 
executive military authority in order that the 
machinery of mobilization may work smoothly 
and quickly when the order to mobilize is issued. 
A study of the work of a foreign general staff, 
such as that of Germany, Italy, France, Austria, 
England, Japan, and even China, must show us 
that we cannot afford, in these days of progress 
and civilization, to remain indifferent. Other 
departments of the government may continue 
their unscientific methods: there but little harm 



NAVAL PEACE PREPARATION 63 

is done. But unscientific methods, a lack of 
system, want of preparation, or civil interference 
mean more in the great military departments. 
Unpreparedness spells disaster to the nation, the 
loss of many thousand trained lives of our citizens, 
sailors, and soldiers. It means yet more — it in- 
volves national dishonor. 

Unfortunately for the human race, half-disasters 
do not awaken nations; otherwise our nation 
would have appreciated its dearly bought lessons 
after the Spanish War. Prussia should have 
awakened after Valmy, but Jena was necessary 
to open the eyes of the German people. Eventu- 
ally, however, the revelation took place, and in 
the modern Germany we see what whole dis- 
asters accomplished for the nation. In every 
civil occupation we have learned to bring science 
to our aid in organizing, systematizing, and ad- 
ministering our business. Commercial men point 
with pride to their planning department, where 
every detail of the business is worked up, and each 
step in the process of mantlf acture is carefully laid 
out and followed. Yet, in the business of govern- 
ment, those fundamental truths that we apply to 
our private business are strangely ignored. 1 

1 How long would it be before a business conducted along the 
lines of our present naval administration went into the hands of a 
receiver? That was what happened to our navy from 1842 to and 
including the year 1889, during which there was a gradual but sure 
decadence. The truth of this statement is amply borne out by the 
annual reports of successive secretaries of the navy. 



64 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

In the evolution of man from a protoplasmic 
cell, about the last step was the creation of intelli- 
gence. The Department of the Navy is following 
this law of evolution. But it must yet be struck 
with the fairy wand to be made into a thinking 
entity. This creation of intelligence, in order that 
the organization may bring system into its life, 
means the forming of a general staff — not merely 
a vest-pocket encyclopaedia, where important in- 
formation may be instantly obtained, but an ex- 
ecutive body, endowed with power of execution 
for which it will stand responsible to the country 
as regards the navy's preparation for war. The 
creation of a general staff for the navy is im- 
portant when we realize that the government 
has no continuing body of men whose duty it is 
to prepare the entire nation for a conflict, to study 
the policies of competing nations, to discover 
where our policies are liable to create diplomatic 
friction, to study the means of averting conflicts, 
to decide as to the quantity of means needed for 
the purpose — in a word, to co-ordinate the policies 
of the nation with the means at hand to give 
them effect. 1 

1 At present there exists a general board and Naval War College, 
but neither is equipped for adequately performing the duties of a 
naval general staff. The demands upon the staff of the War College 
and the members of the general board for other questions involving 
the efficiency of the personnel and material of the navy are such 
that they have had neither the time nor the opportunity to fully 
prepare in detail and perfect this work. After hearing the opinions 



NAVAL PEACE PREPARATION 65 

The army and the navy are for the purposes 
of war. This fact is simple of comprehension, 
yet how many are willing to understand it ? If, 
then, the army and the navy are for the purposes 
of war, the question arises: "War with whom?" 
This question is not one for the army man or the 
navy man to answer. It is a question which the 
statesmen of the country must answer. Once 
this question is answered, and definite opponents 
are pointed out, then the nation should ask those 
responsible in the control of the army and the 
navy: "Are the army and the navy ready for war 
with this or that enemy?" Readiness is a com- 
parable term. The army and the navy may be 
ready for war with Mexico, with South America, 
with China, with Africa, and, maybe, with Turkey ; 
but those countries are not our probable enemies. 
If the enemy pointed out by the statesmen were 
England, Germany, or Japan, the opinion of the 
army and navy would be that we were not now 
ready for war, and that, to wage a war, any one 
of those countries would tax to its limit the 
resources of the entire country. Vast sums of 



of naval officers on this subject, the Naval Committee of the House 
of Representatives urged the necessity for an office in the naval 
establishment that would fill this great and vital need of an executive 
and military branch for the proper employment of the vessels of 
our navy. The naval appropriation bill recently passed by Congress 
fortunately contains a provision for the creation of such a legalized 
chief of naval operations. 



66 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

money would have to be spent hurriedly and 
without opportunity for proper consideration. 

Perhaps an outline of our naval organization 
would not here be amiss. 

The present system of administration in the 
Navy Department was established in 1842, to 
succeed the Board of Navy Commissioners, who 
are generally supposed to have been supplanted 
because they had no individual duties or respon- 
sibilities. 1 At its head is a civilian secretary of 
the navy, who is assisted in his administration 
by an assistant secretary of the navy. Under 
the secretary the civil and industrial work of the 
department is carried on by bureaus whose chiefs 
are each personally responsible to him for the per- 
formance of the duties assigned to them by law. 
These chiefs of bureaus have executive authority 
extending even to the fleet. 2 The Bureau of 
Navigation is charged with the maintenance of 

1 These commissioners assisted the secretary of the navy by their 
counsel in the "employment of vessels of war," and "executed such 
orders as the secretary shall receive from the President." 

2 This is a violation of the fundamental military principle, the 
granting to a subordinate executive powers equal to those of his 
superior in rank; it is a direct infringement upon the prerogatives 
of the secretary of the navy — a fatal defect in the law. In fact, this 
provision of the act, in practice, creates eight secretaries of the navy, 
each one, in his own particular sphere, clothed with executive au- 
thority equal to that of the constitutional commander-in-chief. 
This is what has created the dire confusion, duplication of work, 
extravagance, and irresponsibility which, according to several secre- 
taries of the navy in the past, have characterized the business methods 
of the Navy Department for the last seventy years. 



NAVAL PEACE PREPARATION 67 

the personnel of the naval establishment and 
with the discipline and education of the service. 
The Bureau of Ordnance is charged with the de- 
sign and manufacture of guns, armor, torpedoes, 
ammunition, and explosives. The Bureau of Con- 
struction and Repair, composed of naval architects, 
is charged with all that relates to the construction 
and repair of the ships of the navy. The Bureau 
of Steam Engineering designs and builds the 
machinery for all our vessels of war. The Bureau 
of Yards and Docks, the chief of which is a civil 
engineer, has charge of the designing, building, 
and maintenance of the dry docks, wharfs, and 
buildings at the navy-yards. The Bureau of 
Medicine and Surgery is charged with the health 
of the personnel. And, lastly, the Bureau of 
Supplies and Accounts is charged with the pur- 
chase of all food, clothing, supplies, and even 
ships, and with the disbursing of all moneys ap- 
propriated for the naval service. 

In addition to the bureaus, the organization 
of the Navy Department includes the judge- 
advocate general, whose duties are to consider 
and report upon all legal questions relating to the 
personnel; the solicitor, who attends to the other 
legal matters, such as contracts pertaining to 
the service; the general board, which considers 
the plans for the preparation and maintenance 
of the fleet for war; and the office of naval intel- 



68 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

ligence, which collects information relating to 
foreign navies and to other subjects of interest 
to the naval service. 

The various activities essential to so complex 
an institution are thus accounted for. But, as 
Mr. Meyer pointed out in his annual report for 
1909, the business of the department has entirely- 
outgrown its original 1842 organization and its 
reorganization of 1862. The most serious defects 
he mentioned were the deplorable lack of a branch 
dealing directly and solely with the military use 
of the fleet and the lack of responsible expert 
advisers to aid the secretary in reaching conclu- 
sions in case of disagreement between the co-ordi- 
nate branches of the department. 

The business administration of the Navy De- 
partment seemed logically to divide itself into 
groups under personnel, material, and the opera- 
tions or management of the personnel and ma- 
terial. So, to provide himself with professional 
and responsible advisers in co-ordinating the work 
of the department, Mr. Meyer detailed four 
officers of the rank as aides to the secretary of the 
navy in matters of general policy. These officers 
have been continued by the present secretary of 
the navy. They act solely in an advisory ca- 
pacity and have no supervisory or executive 
power. The aide for operations advises the 
secretary as to strategic and tactical matters and 



NAVAL PEACE PREPARATION 69 

regarding the movements of the fleet. The aide 
for material advises him upon the material con- 
dition of the fleet. The aide for personnel 
advises him upon matters affecting the officers 
and men of the fleet. The aide for inspections, 
recently abolished, advised him upon the con- 
dition of the fleet and upon the state and manage- 
ment of the navy-yards. The aide for education, 
recently appointed, advises him upon the academic 
education of the fleet, not upon its education 
for battle. 

The statutes assume that if a secretary has a 
head for each of the activities required by the 
fleet, that he can decide the best way to act. 
This the last secretary of the navy, Mr. Meyer, 
realized was erroneous. The heads of the techni- 
cal bureaus are usually too much immersed in 
their own specialties to assist the secretary, a 
civilian and not a military man, in making cor- 
rect military decisions. 1 Mr. Meyer, therefore, 

1 To quote from Secretary Moody's testimony before the House 
Committee on Naval Affairs, April n, 1904: 

" It may be said that the secretary already has the chiefs of bureaus 
as advisers. At the heads of those bureaus, now established by law, 
there are and will be competent officers with adequate technical and 
military information. They are abundantly able to give safe coun- 
sel on the important duties with which their respective bureaus are 
charged; but they are engrossed with the duties of the administra- 
tion of their bureaus. They have no responsibility for the con- 
sideration of these military questions to which I have referred, nor 
any duty to give advice upon them; and the world's experience has 
shown that no advice is good except that for which advisers are held 



70 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

instituted the policy of having advisers to the 
secretary. In other words, he realized that in 
his short tenure of office as secretary he could not 
make himself into a military man; that he could 
not get the military training required to efficiently 
manage the military organization unaided. He 
knew that he was a good business man, and a 
successful one, but his business had not been 
that of the navy. He did not have behind him 
an experience of thirty odd years of sea service. 
He felt that the information given to him by the 
bureaus must be placed in such shape by his 



responsible. The volunteer adviser is not usually of much assis- 
tance. Much as I have profited by the advice of the bureau chiefs, 
I know by practical experience that it is impossible for them to take 
from their administrative duties the time which will enable them to 
consider these questions with such deliberation as would render 
them willing to accept responsibility for advice. 

" There is another side to the question. On the other side, I deem 
it of the greatest importance that no body should be created which 
would usurp the powers of the secretary and make him its mere 
mouthpiece or reduce him to a mere figurehead in naval organiza- 
tion. I believe that is not only of importance to the country but 
of equal importance to the navy itself. It is the secretary alone 
who can bring effective influence to bear upon the national adminis- 
tration or, in conference with the representatives of the legislative 
part of our government, carry such weight that proper measures 
will be enacted by Congress and proper supplies afforded. Of course, 
it is ultimately upon the action of Congress that all naval efficiency 
must depend. I do not care how efficient a general staff may be, 
or any body called by another name, however well that body may 
understand the needs of the navy: they can never, in my opinion, 
except in times of great emergency, wield that influence which brings 
into harmonious co-operation the national administration, the mili- 
tary power, and the authority of Congress which governs us all." 



NAVAL PEACE PREPARATION 71 

aides that he, untrained in naval matters, could 
handle it as a business man. In fact, his aides 
were for the purpose of translating the naval facts 
into language within his grasp and understand- 
ing. When once these facts were so presented 
to him, he, as a good business man, could render 
a correct decision. Then, once this decision was 
given, the naval aides were delegated the power 
of the secretary to carry out that decision. The 
secretary and his naval aides looked upon the 
questions confronting the navy from the point of 
naval efficiency, and each decision was made 
with the idea of gaining efficiency for the navy, 
and the execution of the idea, in consequence, 
steadily increased the efficiency of the fleet. 

One of the first acts of Congress should be 
logically to legalize the council of aides and to 
make one of the aides paramount, like first sea 
lord of the British navy, to whom the English 
people look for efficiency of their fleet. 

We have seen recently how a similar democ- 
racy, England, upon going to war, placed a mili- 
tary man in control of her War Office. Lord 
Kitchener was about to start for Egypt when 
the war in Europe broke out. But the English, 
knowing the unpreparedness of their army and 
appreciating that its preparation could be ac- 
complished in a relatively short time only by a 
military man of the caliber of Kitchener, at once 



72 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

installed him as the first war lord of England. 
On the other hand, Admiral Sir John Fisher 
is practically in control of the admiralty; the 
first lord doubtless accepts his plans in all naval 
matters, for it is to Sir John Fisher that the 
English people look for naval results and not to 
Winston Churchill. 

Some years ago, in 1909, a commission was ap- 
pointed by the President of the United States, 
whose report should be known to every American. 
It is no more or less than a recapitulation of the 
fundamental principles underlying a military ad- 
ministration for the Navy Department. This 
document clears the atmosphere. Its language is 
so plain and so eloquent that any one upon reading 
it must be convinced of its soundness. The board 
was composed of men whose honesty of purpose 
cannot be questioned. They were William H. 
Moody, Paul Morton, Stephen B. Luce, Alfred 
T. Mahan, and A. G. Dayton. Unfortunately, 
these men are of a persuasion in politics different 
from those now in power, but their decisions, as 
can be seen, are divorced from any conception of 
partisan politics. 

The report of the commission is as follows: 

1. The Office of the Secretary of the Navy being execu- 
tive in character, nothing should be admitted into an 
organization of the Department which would qualify his 
authority or diminish his ultimate responsibility. He 



NAVAL PEACE PREPARATION 73 

has been in the past, and in the future should be, a civil- 
ian. He is the representative of the President, the con- 
stitutional Commander-in-Chief of the army and navy, 
under whose direction his authority is exercised. 

2. The duties in charge of the Secretary divide under 
the principal heads, closely related, but generically dis- 
tinct: military and civil. 

The civil duties embrace the provision or preparation 
of all material of war. This is the function of the present 
bureaus. 

The military duties concern the use of that material, 
whether in war or in such exercises as conduce to fitness 
for operations of war. For the direction of these military 
duties, no subordinate provision corresponding to the 
bureaus on the civil side exists in the present organization. 

3. The discharge of both these classes of duty involves 
a multitude of activities, quite beyond the immediate 
personal knowledge and supervision of a single man. 
This necessitates a subdivision of the duties, by which 
means the supervision of the Secretary is exerted through 
the medium of responsible subordinates. In this sub- 
division the Principle of Undivided Responsibility, 
within the Appointed Field of Subordinate Super- 
vision, should obtain as it does in the superior office of 
the Secretary. 

The bureau system, as now established by law for the 
civil activities of the department, insures for each bureau 
this undivided responsibility, qualified only by the au- 
thority of the Secretary, which, if exerted, does not 
divide the responsibility, but transfers it to the Secretary 
himself. Independent Authority, with Undivided Re- 
sponsibility, though in principle proper, suffers histori- 
cally from intrinsic inability to co-operate, where a num- 
ber of such independent units are present. The Marshals 



74 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

of the first Napoleon — especially in Spain — in the absence 
of the Emperor, offer a familiar illustration. The bureau 
system constituted by law contains no remedy for this 
inherent defect. 

4. The co-ordinating power is in the Secretary's au- 
thority; but, owing to the shortness of tenure in office, 
and to the inevitable unfamiiiarity with naval conditions 
with which an incumbent begins, authority, though ade- 
quate in principle, is not so in effect. This inadequacy 
consists in lack of personal familiarity with the subjects 
before him, not merely severally, but in their collective 
relations; in short, lack of specific knowledge and experi- 
ence. The organization should provide him with such 
knowledge and experience, digested formally, so as to 
facilitate his personal acquirement; in short, an advisory 
body, equipped not with advice merely, but with reasons. 
In order to avoid the interruption of continuity attend- 
ing each new administration, entailing the recurrent tem- 
porary unfamiiiarity of each new Secretary, it is expedient 
that this advisory body be composed of several persons; 
but while this provision would insure the continuity 
which inheres in a corporate body, in this case continuity 
of knowledge and progress, the principle of undivided 
responsibility would dictate that One only of them should 
be responsible for the advice given to the common superior, 
the Secretary. 

5. As regards the composition of the advisory body, 
the principles to be regarded are two: 

(A) The end dictates the means. 

(B) The responsibility must be individual, in advice 
as well as in executive action. 

04) The end is efficiency in war. The agents in war 
are the military naval officers. Their profession qualifies 
them best to pronounce upon the character of the prepa- 



NAVAL PEACE PREPARATION 75 

rations of every kind for war, including not only schemes 
of campaign and tactical systems, but the classes, sizes, 
qualities, and armaments of ships of war. 

What the Secretary needs, specifically and above all, 
is a clear understanding and firm grasp of leading military 
considerations. Possessed of these, he may without great 
difficulty weigh the recommendations of his technical 
assistants, decide for himself and depend upon them for 
technical execution of that which he approves. 

However constituted in detail, the advisory body should 
be taken entirely from the class to which belongs the con- 
duct of war, and upon them will fall in war the responsi- 
bility for the use of the instruments and for the results 
of the measures which they recommend. 

(23) As regards individual responsibility for advice, it 
is suggested that the Secretary of the Navy nominate to 
the President the officer whom he deems best fitted to 
command the great fleet in case of war arising; and that 
this officer, irrespective of his seniority, should be head 
of the advisory body. He alone should be the responsi- 
ble adviser of the Secretary. 

The provision of a responsible adviser does not compel 
the Secretary to accept his advice, nor prevent his con- 
sulting whomsoever else he will. The provision sug- 
gested does not limit the authority of the Secretary; but 
it does provide him with the weightiest and most instructed 
counsel, and it lays upon the prospective Commander- 
in-Chief the solemn charge that in all he recommends 
he is sowing for a future which he himself may have to 
reap. 

An essential principle in the constitution of such an 
advisory body is that the majority of the members should 
be on the active list and should go afloat at no infrequent 
intervals; and, specifically, the head of the body, the 



76 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

prospective Commander-in-Chief, should during the sum- 
mer months take command of the fleet when concentrated 
for manoeuvres, etc., to sustain his familiarity with ad- 
ministrative routine and other practical matters. 

6. In the two principal classes into which the duties 
of the Secretary of the Navy divide, civil and military, 
as enunciated in Section 2 above, the word "civil" cor- 
responds largely to the activities known as technical; 
and there is no reason apparent why the same principle 
of undivided immediate responsibility should not be re- 
alized in the Navy Department in two chief subordinates, 
responsible, the one for military supervision, the other 
for technical supervision, and for all information and ad- 
vice given to the Secretary under these two heads. It is 
of course apparent that a perfectly suitable Secretary 
may come to his office with as little previous knowledge 
of the kind called technical as he has of military; nay, he 
may be perfectly efficient, and yet not acquire in his four 
years of office either the technical or the military knowl- 
edge presumable in men whose fives have been given to 
the two professions. Under the most favorable condi- 
tions, every superior must take decisions largely on advice; 
which means not accepting another's opinions blindly, 
but accepting statements of facts and weighing reasons. 

The principle of the Secretary's ultimate individual re- 
sponsibility dictates that he be at libery to consult as 
many advisers as he thinks necessary; but the principle 
of the individual responsibility of two chief advisers, for 
the advice given, tends to insure the most exhaustive 
consideration on the part of men selected for their special 
competency. Careful consideration with special com- 
petency give the best guarantees for advice, and a Secre- 
tary overruling it would do so under the weightiest sense 
of personal responsibility. 



NAVAL PEACE PREPARATION 77 

Can any one doubt the soundness of these prin- 
ciples? They apply hot only to a military ser- 
vice, but to any great commercial organization. 
For instance, the president of a railroad must be 
ultimately responsible for the efficiency of his 
road, yet he will not invade the provinces of his 
subordinates who, in their specialties, are thor- 
oughly capable of giving efficient and loyal ser- 
vice. Each brings to his work a special knowl- 
edge and experience which may or may not be 
had by the president. The president will hold 
each responsible for his acts. The president and 
his council will decide the broad policies of the 
road. These policies will guide the subordinates 
in their work. The general manager, assistant 
general manager, general superintendent, etc., 
through their intimate knowledge of the require- 
ments of the railroad, will also guide the president 
and his council in their work. The president of 
a railroad would not disregard the responsibility 
of his traffic manager by directing against his 
technical advice the introduction of special trains 
or changing the existing schedules, for in so doing 
the president of a railroad knows that dangerous 
collisions would result and many lives would be 
lost. 

Let us look back into our history and see how 
the Navy Department prepared for the war with 
Spain. As early as the middle of March, 1898, 



78 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

the government in Washington began to prepare 
for war. In the next six months 102 vessels of 
all sorts, even tugs and ferry-boats, were bought. 
They were inspected by boards of naval officers, 
but the emergency was great and thorough in- 
spections were impossible. There had been no 
inspection of vessels before the war as to their 
fitness for war purposes. Twenty-one million 
four hundred and fifty thousand dollars were spent 
on these vessels. During the war the active fleet 
was increased by 130 ships. Many of the pur- 
chased vessels were converted into auxiliary 
cruisers, the conversion of which required at least 
a one month's stay at the navy-yards. The navy 
personnel was increased from 13,000 to 25,000. 
Vast supplies were purchased at exorbitant prices. 
In many cases there had been no contract for sup- 
plies before the war, and the Navy Department 
was forced to accept the best terms it could get. 
In Washington all was confusion until Captain 
Mahan arrived, bringing with him an atmosphere 
of calm and sound deliberation and a compre- 
hensive knowledge of fundamental strategical 
principles. A naval war council was immediately 
formed. A state of war having arisen, the secre- 
tary of the navy at once realized the necessity of 
a general staff. This war board, or general staff, 
organized an information service which gave 
Admiral Sampson his only certain news among the 



NAVAL PEACE PREPARATION 79 

vast amount of rumors as to the movements of 
the enemy. Admiral Mahan was a typical gen- 
eral staff officer. He had studied for years at the 
Naval War College the strategical situation of the 
United States. In his lectures before the War 
College he had developed a sound strategy for the 
navy which, upon the outbreak of war, became 
the navy's plan of campaign. Whatever merits 
there were in the conduct of our naval war with 
Spain belong to him. His genius was the navy's 
guiding star. 

The war having been brought to a successful 
end, the naval board was dismissed. 

Any one who witnessed the confusion, not only 
in the Navy Department in Washington, but at 
all the navy-yards and recruiting stations in 1898, 
can multiply that confusion by about six and then 
obtain a fair picture of what would happen in 
case the United States went to war within the 
year. The size of our present navy, ships and men, 
is just six times its size in 1898. To plan the 
opening moves in our mobilization requires a 
general staff composed of men who have given 
several years to a close study of the conditions of 
naval war. They must prepare that plan to the 
most minute detail, and have it always ready 
for promulgation. 

The next war will probably not be with another 
Spain. It will be with a country which has worked 



80 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

out such a plan of mobilization, and who, doubt- 
less, knows of our unpreparedness. The enemy, 
therefore, will use his utmost endeavors to cut 
short our time of preparation, and force us to fight 
unprepared by striking swiftly and secretly. 

The United States is considered to be one of the 
world's most scientific nations. Methods of sci- 
entific management are the rule in business. The 
army's methods are becoming more scientific, 
due to the tutelage of the general staff and the 
Army War College, but the navy is, if anything, 
still deep in the mire of red tape. Our navy-yards 
are so congested with work, and the hand of the 
politician rules there so strongly that even the 
supreme influence of the commander-in-chief of 
the Atlantic fleet has been powerless to limit 
the prolonged stay of ships at navy-yards. The 
methods of buying material for the navy require 
such a length of time that repairs to ships which 
should be effected in a few weeks are delayed 
often many months. There are battleships and 
other vessels that have spent at the navy-yards 
50 per cent of their first few years in commission, 
and against this disorganizing condition the com- 
mander-in-chief of the fleet seems powerless. 

One of the greatest authorities in naval matters, 
in discussing our naval administration, has said: 

It is conceded that the present organization of the 
Navy Department . . . has performed the business of 



NAVAL PEACE PREPARATION 81 

the Navy Department adequately; its shortcomings have 
not been due to any deficiency in skill or want of business 
capacity in administration, but rather because the or- 
ganization has lacked the principle of responsible mili- 
tary advice to the Secretary. 

The object and ultimate end of the Navy Department 
are to build, arm, equip, and man the fleet in order to 
prepare it for war. It is conceivable that in a highly 
developed industrial community like our own the busi- 
ness of the Navy Department might, under its Secretary, 
be restricted to its military duties only, the supplies of 
every nature, including the vessels themselves and their 
entire war outfit, being obtained by purchase, as has been 
illustrated in certain foreign countries. The predominant 
character and importance of efficient military counsel 
will thus be appreciated. 

The convincing soundness of this advice upon 
military administration has ever since been dis- 
regarded. It was given six years ago. 

The navy-yards and the controlling bureaus of 
the Navy Department are merely outfitters and, 
if properly controlled, should work in cordial and 
intelligent support of each other to meet the de- 
mands of consumers, who, in this case, are the 
naval officers who use the material provided for 
them. To control the naval outfitters, to make 
them work in cordial and intelligent support of 
each other, is the duty of a general staff. 

It must always be remembered that any suc- 
cessful business represents an accumulation of 
the ideas of many men. These ideas must have 



82 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

a repository where they can be sifted out, tagged, 
and labelled to be used for the betterment of the 
service. 

The cycle of our naval administration is not a 
closed one, and for that reason men untrained in 
the art of war are incapable, of assaying profits. 
Congress appropriates the money wisely and un- 
wisely. This money is converted into raw ma- 
terial and labor, and this raw material and labor 
are in turn converted into the finished product 
and service. But these finished products and ser- 
vice are not converted back into money. They 
have become something intangible, a potential 
power — a weapon ready for immediate use, but 
one the nation hopes it may never have to use. 
The steel of the blade, however, must be kept 
bright and sharp. Can a civilian secretary, with 
no experience in the art of war, tell by examining 
that instrument whether or not its blade is of 
true temper ? 



CHAPTER V 

OUR MILITARY REQUIREMENTS 

A MERICA, as has been shown, has the his- 
/-% toxical calling of guardian over the repub- 
lican forms of government which have 
been established by the various peoples of this 
continent. Those traditional policies we must 
safeguard by preparedness, for our present posi- 
tion we shall not be able to maintain indefinitely 
without an appeal to arms. Fortunately, such 
an appeal does not, of necessity, mean war. Mili- 
tary preparation is an asset to the statesman. 
By the threat of an appeal to arms victories in 
peace can be won as lasting as those achieved on 
the field of battle. This, history has taught 
since the beginning of things. But let us also be 
forewarned; such a threat, given without the 
necessary force to back it, is futile and has al- 
ways led to war. 

Two principles that must govern the action of 
a nation in its preparation for possible conflict 
must be accepted by Americans. They are: (a) 

S3 



84 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

that the fleet is our first line of defense, and (b) 
that it is the duty of every male citizen to prepare 
himself for the military service of his country. 

The naval and military armaments of the 
present day must be ready at all times if they 
are to be effective in time of need. The size 
of our fleet must be based upon that of its pos- 
sible opponents. In order that we may have a 
fleet capable of achieving the aim of our naval 
strategy, the probable theatre of war must be 
studied and a knowledge gained of the character 
of the struggle which will have to be waged to 
gain command of the seas. The defense of our 
coast is assured when our control of the seas is 
secured. For the protection of our coast, al- 
though the end is defensive, the means will not 
be defensive. The fleet cannot merely stand 
on guard. Its fighting power cannot be frittered 
away by being thinly spread along our entire 
coast-line. It must have "force" as a fleet; 
it must have mobility. And that fleet must have 
more than that mobility; it must be capable of 
gaining information of the enemy's movements 
and able to maintain its activity in whatever 
area of hostilities it may be drawn. Its primary 
duty is to find and engage the naval power of 
the enemy. "Force" rests on battleships, battle 
cruisers, destroyers, and submarines. ' ' Mobility ' ' 
indicates great individual size and steaming 



OUR MILITARY REQUIREMENTS 85 

radius. To gather information of the enemy, to 
avoid surprise, and to bring the hostile squadrons 
to action require fast scouts of great steaming 
radius. To maintain the fleet's activity in the 
area of probable hostilities requires well-equipped 
and protected naval bases, colliers, repair ships, 
mother ships for submarines and tenders, ammu- 
nition ships, mine-layers, mine-sweepers, and hos- 
pital ships. The study of the creation, organi- 
zation, administration, and management of such 
a fleet is a scientific one solely. The statesman, 
a civilian, points out the probable antagonist. 
This information is in the keeping of the states- 
man. The question of the disposition and the 
use of a fleet to accomplish the national purpose — 
that is, the perpetuation of its policies — cannot 
be intrusted to those whose sole fitness for the 
task lies in their capabilities as leaders in the 
internal politics of the country. The nation must 
insist that where a question arises concerning 
the navy as a fighting machine, that question 
shall be decided by those who have given a life 
of study to naval affairs. To permit a politician, 
be he ever so patriotic, to make military or naval 
decisions, is to court disaster. 

On the side of organization alone, it is well to 
bear in mind that a military force — a fleet or an 
army — cannot be levied en masse and led at 
once successfully into battle. It is first neces- 



86 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

sary to train the personnel and prepare the vast 
material required. Military preparation we must 
consider in the light of a great social benefit. 
Such preparation raises the capabilities of the 
nation as a unit, which is a great national asset 
and a strong card in the hands of the statesman. 
In its more technical sense, preparation provides 
for the conduct of a war and supplies the means to 
carry it through. In our every-day walks of life, 
in business, in the arts and sciences, social com- 
petition is evident on every hand. Those hold 
the field who are intellectually well equipped for 
the contest. So it is with nations. Military ser- 
vice is well known to develop the intellectual and 
moral fibre of the individual. Through him it 
benefits the nation by rendering him more effi- 
cient for the occupations of peace. Military 
training gives a man the full mastery of his body ; 
exercises and increases his initiative; develops 
self-reliance and decision of character. It teaches 
him to subordinate his will to a higher recognized 
authority. It develops in him those necessary 
qualities, self-respect and courage, both moral 
and physical. It is time that we realized that 
training in the profession of arms is a national 
asset which increases the wealth of the nation 
by increasing the efficiency of its individuals in 
the arts, in industries, in trade, and in commerce. 
A military nation will successfully embark in 



OUR MILITARY REQUIREMENTS 87 

enterprises which the non-military nation, fear- 
ing the risk involved, will refuse to undertake. 

It is now a well-recognized fact, that our his- 
tories have suppressed the military lessons which 
should have been forcibly brought before the 
people of the country. Our studied lack of pre- 
paredness in the military art has now been tested 
during more than a century. We have engaged 
in foreign, domestic, and Indian wars, and have in 
every one achieved the final success. But how 
many Americans have realized the price at which 
that success has been bought, or considered the 
delays and disasters that prolonged our wars till, 
in nearly every instance, our national resources 
were completely exhausted? Has not the final 
outcome in each case deluded the popular mind 
into the belief that we are, as a nation, invincible? 

How many Americans have any conception of 
the outrageous extravagance in men and money 
that has characterized our past wars? With a 
first-class power we have never yet been engaged. 
England, in her wars with us, has always been 
occupied elsewhere and never could spare more 
than a small part of her forces to war on us. Yet 
in the Revolutionary War it took 231,771 of our 
Continental troops and 164,000 minutemen to 
defeat the 150,605 soldiers that England sent to 
the discontented colonies. Our regulars bore the 
brunt of the fighting heroically, but our undisci- 



88 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

plined militia tarnished the honor of our arms 
on more than one occasion. 

In the War of 1812 the navy alone saved us 
from national dishonor. But the successful cruises 
and the brilliant victories of the Constitution and 
of her consorts were not the entire record of those 
years of almost uninterrupted disasters on land. 
Our 56,032 regular troops and the 471,622 militia 
that we called into the field were shamefully 
routed, time and again — except at Lundy's Lane 
and at New Orleans — by less than 55,000 British 
and Canadians. Again, in the Mexican War of 
1846 were we fortunate. Our antagonist here 
was racially weaker, yet no less than 30,000 reg- 
ular troops and 73,532 militia and volunteers were 
required to conquer less than 47,000 ill-fed and 
ill-equipped Mexicans. 

And in 186 1 our national resources were almost 
completely exhausted by the delays and disasters 
that characterized the first few months of the 
conflict — disasters that could have been avoided 
in every case by adequate preparation. It is 
questionable whether there ever would have been 
a war, had the Federal Government had the 
proper trained force at hand. Yet a few months 
before the war it was actually proposed in Con- 
gress to abolish the navy. 1 

1 In the Civil War the United States employed 67,000 regulars, 
and 2,605,000 militia and volunteers to defeat 978,664 Confederates. 
And in the Spanish- American War of 189S we were compelled to 



OUR MILITARY REQUIREMENTS 89 

Do we realize that if our fleet were defeated 
to-day, nothing would stand between us and the 
invasion of our territory? Our pitifully small 
army could not possibly defend our entire sea- 
coast, and the undisciplined hordes that would be 
called to the colors would be almost as useless for 
military purposes as would a like number of sheep 
or horses. The average American believes that 
if the danger of invasion were imminent, the na- 
tion would rise as one man to repel the invader; 
but nations cannot rise as one man unless their 
organization for the purpose has been carefully 
worked out beforehand, and they themselves have 
been previously trained for the task. 

Leaving out of consideration the possible men- 
ace of the European nations, let us consider the 
case of Japan. In the 'g-o's her policy clashed 
with the policies of China over the kingdom of 
Corea, which neither had a right to consider 
its prize. A war resulted. "The subjects of the 
Japanese Empire had all been trained in the use 
of arms. Even at that date, Japan had organized 
a general staff, consisting of her greatest military 
intellects. The nation was fully prepared for the 

raise 58,688 regulars, and 223,235 militia and volunteers to subdue 
less than 200,000 Spaniards. Two hundred thousand volunteers 
were called for by the President in April, 1898, yet, though every State 
responded instantly, the work of mobilizing these troops was con- 
ducted in so bungling a fashion that by the beginning of June only 
three regiments, in addition to the regulars, had reached the rendez- 
vous at Tampa, Florida. 



90 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

struggle which her statesmen had foreseen. China, 
in a manner strikingly similar to the methods of 
this republic, refused to believe that war was 
possible. In China, the military was considered 
of an inferior cloth to the scholar, the idealist, the 
civilizer, the poet. War came suddenly, but it 
came at the very moment when the statesmen of 
Japan had decided it should come. Japan won, 
of course, but she was deprived of the fruits of 
the war through the acts of a coalition of Euro- 
pean nations. All that was left to her was the 
island of Formosa, in which she now has a naval 
base that will prove most useful in her next war, 
when the probable area of naval hostilities will 
be in the waters of the Philippines. 

Russia forced Japan to give up the territory 
won by the sword in Manchuria, and occupied it 
herself. Japan, from that moment, began to 
prepare herself for a war with Russia. The Em- 
peror called his military and naval advisers to- 
gether at the imperial palace at Tokio. He said 
to them: "We must fight Russia." They an- 
swered: "Your Majesty, it is impossible; we 
cannot win. Give us ten years and we shall be 
ready to fight." In nine years the statesmen and 
military and naval advisers of the Emperor went 
to him and said: "We are ready." Russia mean- 
while had expended money and resources in build- 
ing the great railroad from Saint Petersburg to 



OUR MILITARY REQUIREMENTS 91 

Vladivostock and Port Arthur. Her people had 
peacefully penetrated vast areas of Manchuria. 
Manchuria was becoming rapidly Russianized. 
The war that followed is too fresh in our minds 
for us to forget. The surprise of the world was 
great when Japan, that small island empire, 
began the war precipitately, and with victory 
after victory, finally beat the Russian giant to 
his knees, and won back the territory that Russia 
had taken from her through the power of diplo- 
macy, backed by the threat of a coalition of force 
too powerful to resist. Since this war, Japan has 
been able to direct all her energies toward the 
preparation for a war which her statesmen have 
foreseen to be necessary in order to carry out her 
purpose, which is the political control of the 
Pacific Ocean and its commerce. 

To resist the attack of such a nation as we have 
seen Japan to be, our preparation must be me- 
thodical and scientific. No longer can we afford to 
continue our unscientific and haphazard meth- 
ods of building a fleet and administering it. No 
longer can we afford to believe that our small 
army will be capable of meeting the demands 
which it will be called upon to meet in the event 
of a war with Japan. 

Our fleet in the Atlantic Ocean now consists 
of 8 dreadnaughts, 2 semidreadnaughts, 11 pre- 
dreadnaughts, 21 destroyers, 17 submarines, 2 



92 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

armored cruisers, 3 scout cruisers, and about 8 
gunboats. This fleet is manned 1 and ready for 
service. In addition, there are in reserve 7 pre- 
dreadnaughts, and 13 destroyers. The reserve 
fleet has only a nucleus crew. In the case of the 
reserve battleships, only 20 men of the thousand 
required to man them efficiently are on board. 
In the event of hostilities, they would require 
from 600 to 800 additional men each. But we 
have no reserves to draw upon, and every re- 
cruit would, therefore, be without previous train- 
ing. 

A battleship, and, in a lesser degree, a destroyer 
and a submarine follow the biological law of 
growth. In order to develop power, the ship must 
become a distinct entity. When first the crew is 
received, the ship is an awkward recruit, incapable 
of military service. If, while in this condition, it 
is put in the fleet, it weakens that fleet instead of 
strengthening it. The force of a battleship has 
too long, in this country, been reckoned solely by 
the size and power of its guns. No one seems to 

*But not fully manned, since the 21 battleships in commission 
alone, according to the statement of the fleet's commander-in-chief, 
Admiral Fletcher, were, on January 28, 1915, 339 officers and 5,219 
men short of the complements required to man them properly to 
efficiently fight them in battle. The dreadnaught Utah was in need 
of 27 commissioned officers out of 55 required; the Florida was short 
26 officers out of 55 required; the South Carolina had only 21 out 
of 48, and the Michigan 22 out of 48. In the case of only three ships 
of the first battle line was the shortage under double figures ! 



OUR MILITARY REQUIREMENTS 93 

have thought of the psychological, the spiritual 
side, which is of such overwhelming importance. 
On paper, the Atlanti c fleet is said to be com- 
posed of the following: 8 dreadnaughts, 2 semi- 
dreadnaughts, and 18 predreadnaughts, and in 
destroyers 34 modern vessels. Of these, 8 pre- 
dreadnaughts and 16 destroyers are immature in 
their development as fighting units. Naval ex- 
perts agree that at least one year is required for 
the development of a raw crew into an efficient 
battle unit. Recently the world was amazed at 
the ease with which two German armored cruisers, 
the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau, destroyed, in a 
battle off the Chilean coast, the British armored 
cruisers Good Hope and Monmouth, with but neg- 
ligible damage to themselves. True, the arma- 
ment of the German vessels was superior in caliber 
and in carrying power to that of their opponents, 
but this alone could not account for the reason 
why, in an hour's engagement, the British cruisers 
failed to damage their victorious enemy. The 
vaunted British marksmanship had failed signally 
in the hour of battle. Then a veiled statement 
from the British admiralty gave the full explana- 
tion. The crews of the Good Hope and the Mon- 
mouth were not regulars. They were militia — 
reservists. The Good Hope and the Monmouth 
were not effective fighting units of the British 
fleet. Their crews were greatly augmented by 



94 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

recruits upon the outbreak of war. Their doom 
must be laid at the door of that faulty conception 
of naval administration which keeps, in time of 
peace, war-ships in reserve, or in "cold storage," 
and mans them hurriedly with raw and untrained 
crews in time of war. 

This naval catastrophe should not have been 
needed to demonstrate the unfitness of a vessel 
manned in such a way. Naval men, in their 
studies and in the council chamber, should have 
been able to foretell the result of such a method 
of organization. We cannot, therefore, consider 
that our 8 reserve battleships, and our 16 reserve 
destroyers are full units of our battle fleet, since 
we have no " reserves' ' to call upon to fill up 
their complements. In a war with Japan or 
Germany we can count on only those vessels that 
have been maintained in time of peace continu- 
ously in full commission. In those vessels a soul 
has been created. They are spiritually, physically, 
and vitally full-grown organizations, capable of us- 
ing to a maximum the great power of offense and 
defense embodied in the material, in the arma- 
ment of the ship. The thinking naval men of this 
country have endeavored, for some years, to cor- 
rect this grievous fault in our naval policy. They 
have stood for permanency in the personnel of our 
fighting units. They have condemned the policy 
of reserve fleets. But the civil administrators, dis- 



OUR MILITARY REQUIREMENTS 95 

regarding, if knowing, the biological law which 
governs the actions of organizations, have never 
been able to see that the ship must be something 
more than the armor and guns it carries. An un- 
wise economy has prevented an increase of per- 
sonnel to keep pace with the increasing number of 
the ships of our fleet. In order to keep the new 
vessels fully manned, the old vessels were retired 
into the reserve fleet, where they were left with 
only sufficient men on board to oil and paint their 
machinery and armament. In all our statistical 
comparisons with foreign navies, we have counted 
our reserve ships as full fighting units. The battle 
off the Chilean coast now forces the conclusion 
that we must, in our next comparison of fighting 
strength, scratch from the list our vessels of the 
reserve fleet, or else give them full crews and allow 
them to begin their growth to manhood. 

If we scan our fleet in the Pacific we shall find 
in the active fleet 2 armored cruisers, 7 cruisers 
and gunboats, 5 destroyers, and n submarines. 
In the reserve fleet on that coast are 1 battleship, 
3 armored cruisers, 3 large protected cruisers, 4 
destroyers, and 2 old submarines. On the Asiatic 
station there is an active fleet of 1 first-class 
cruiser, 2 monitors, 2 cruisers, 10 gunboats, 5 
old destroyers, and 9 submarines of the oldest 
typ;:. Using the same argument in marshalling 
our war strength, we must, therefore, subtract 



96 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

from our total strength in the Pacific i battleship, 

3 armored cruisers, 3 large first-class cruisers, and 

4 destroyers, which are only the shells of fighting 
ships. Their spirit has not been created. 

The result of the battle off Chile had a parallel 
a century ago in our own history when the Chesa- 
peake fought the Shannon off Boston. The 
Shannon had been in commission for several years. 
Her crew was well trained, and had become a full- 
grown and matured organization. Her striking 
power was intellectually controlled. Her fighting 
capacity was the product of the power of guns and 
the capacity to use them. The Chesapeake, on the 
other hand, left the navy-yard, having just been 
fitted out. As a psychological entity she was in her 
incipiency. She had just begun to "grow." She 
was a child in swaddling-cloths ; yet she went 
out to fight a ship with a full-grown organization, 
leaving the melancholy, if heroic, tradition of a 
battle lost against odds. This lesson of the ne- 
cessity for time in the evolution of a fighting unit, 
be it a regiment on land or a ship on the ocean, 
has been one difficult for the American people to 
grasp. A hundred years later in time of war we 
stand ready to commit the same military crime 
and would send against the Japanese and German 
fleets, composed entirely of fully matured units, 
our 9 reserve battleships, 3 reserve armored 
cruisers, 3 reserve first-class cruisers, and 16 re- 



OUR MILITARY REQUIREMENTS 97 

serve destroyers. We would actually handicap 
our fleet with the care of these charges, while the 
people of the United States firmly believed that 
they had increased the power of the fleet by that 
number of ships. Let us take this second lesson 
of unpreparedness and use it to advantage. Let 
us fully man all our ships that are capable of 
offense, and keep them continually in full com- 
mission. Those for which we have not the per- 
sonnel we must scratch off our lists of fighting 
ships and no longer consider them in the computa- 
tion of our naval strength. A fully organized 
and fully manned navy may repel an invasion, 
or, at least, detain it, until the army has the time 
to mobilize. But without such a naval force we 
are helpless. 



CHAPTER VI 

OUR NAVAL REQUIREMENTS 

A NATION'S foreign policy and the means 
of carrying it out must harmonize. Foreign 
policies, consequently, determine the size 
of a nation's fleet. This means that the determi- 
nation of the naval forces necessary for national 
security, the principal characteristics of the units 
composing such forces, and the location and re- 
sources of bases of operation from which the action 
of the fleet is to be supported require previous 
knowledge of what may be termed the "con- 
stants," the fixed factors, of the international 
situation. This fundamental idea is known and 
accepted in every civilized country except Amer- 
ica. We have international obligations and am- 
bitious policies, but a fleet inadequate both in 
numbers and characteristics and deficient in actual 
bases of operations to support these ambitions. 

When peace again has come to Europe no one 
can tell what naval forces will remain to the war- 
ring combatants. If Germany is successful, she 
will be stronger than ever, numerically and in 
morale. If she is defeated, many years will be 

98 



OUR NAVAL REQUIREMENTS 99 

necessary before she can again compete in mil- 
itary and naval armaments. 

On July 1, 1 9 14, Germany had 17 dreadnaughts 
and battle cruisers in commission against 8 for the 
United States, while Japan holds only 4. In two 
years more, 19 16, Germany would have had 28 
dreadnaughts and battle cruisers against the 
United States' 12 and Japan's 10. If our policies 
are in conflict with those of Germany, by what 
course of reasoning can we dare to say that 12 
dreadnaughts are sufficient to maintain our in- 
tegrity against 28 ? In armored-cruiser strength 
Germany, the United States, and Japan are about 
equal. In cruiser strength, the advanced cavalry 
of a fleet, in 191 6, Germany would have had 46, 
the United States 14, and Japan 13. In destroyers, 
Germany 154, the United States 62, and Japan 52. 
In submarines the United States will, at that date, 
be on an equality with Germany and will be in ad- 
vance of Japan, but the German submarines are 
all of greater tonnage than those of the United 
States, and their effectiveness with the fleet will 
be vastly greater. We thus see that the United 
States has built a naval force at haphazard and 
without considering what is to be its ultimate use. 
It is not the fleet of our policy. It can neither 
defend the Monroe Doctrine in the Atlantic nor 
force the open door in the Pacific. Its weakness 
in scouts and destroyers for the purpose of locat- 



ioo OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

SEA STRENGTH— JULY i, 1914 
Vessels Built 



































&5f 


■ 








2 




S 


2 r3 


.s 


E! 


"g " 


01 


| 





•S 


" ~ '~ 


u 


£ S 


C M 


CO 


2 


= - 


e 



































M 


nu 


<~ 


U 


O 


H« 


C/3 


20 


40 


9 


34 


74 9 


1679 


49 


75 9 


13 


20 


4 


9 


41 


130 





27 


8 


22 





11 


14 


51 


13 


30 


4 


l8 





20 


9 


84 


135 


64 


2 


13 


2 


13 


13 


50 


27 


13 





7 





6 


9 


91 


14 


30 


3 


8 





9 


6 


32 


68 


19 


3 


6 





2 


5 


18 


39 


6 



- :-; 



England 

Germany , 

United States. . . 

France 

Japan 

Russia 

Italy 

Austria-Hungary 



Vessels Building or Authorized 



England* 

Germany 7 

United States. . 

France 

Japan s 

Russia^ 

Italy 

Austria-Hungary 



16 






1 




I7(») 


2I(») 





22 




7 






4 




5 


24 





18 




4 














II 





19 




8 














3 





22 




4 






2 







2 





2 




7 






4 




8 


44 





19 




7 











2 


15 


2 


8 




4 











5 


1 


24 


6 





1 Battleships having a main battery of all big guns Cn inches or more in caliber). 

' Battleships of (about) 10,000 tons, or more displacement, and having more than 
one caliber in the main batters-. 

'Armored cruisers having guns of largest caliber in main battery and capable of 
taking their place in line of battle with the battleships. They have an increase of 
speed at the expense of carrying fewer guns in main battery, and a decrease in armor 
protection. 

* Includes all unarmored cruising vessels above 1,500 tons' displacement. 

1 Includes smaller battleships and monitors. No more vessels of this class are be- 
ing produced or built by the great powers. 

« England has no continuing ship-building policy, but usually lays down each year 
4 or 5 armored ships with a proportional number of smaller vessels. 

1 Germany has a continuing ship-building programme, governed by a fleet law 
authorized by the Reichstag. For'iois there are authorized 1 battleship, 1 battle 
cruiser, 2 cruisers, 12 destroyers. Eventual strength to consist of 41 battleships, 
20 armored cruisers. 40 cruisers, 144 destro}-ers, 72 submarines. 

•$78,837,569 authorized to be expended from 1911 to 1917 for the construction of 
war vessels. 

• Includes vessels of colonies, 

" Russian ship-building programme provides for the completion by 1918 of 4 battle 
cruisers, 8 small cruisers, ^& destroyers, and 18 submarines- 



OUR NAVAL REQUIREMENTS 101 

ing an advancing enemy in the Atlantic and bring- 
ing it to action is lamentable. Its power to carry 
on war in the Asiatic is rendered ineffective by 
its lack of auxiliaries and a secure base in the far 
East from which to operate. 

This lack of preparedness, this failure to build 
a navy commensurate to our purpose, speaks ill 
of the effectiveness, in practice, of popular gov- 
ernment. In the continual strife between the 
two great rival parties in America, the navy has 
been the shuttlecock. The indifference of our 
statesmen has permitted the questions of national 
defense to become party issues. 

The difference in method between Germany 
and the United States in gaining their purpose is 
one only of degree. By Germany, force is con- 
sidered the proper instrument, but with us we 
prefer bluff ! The United States possesses a great 
empire and has only to preserve it, while Germany 
must establish her economic independence and 
security of national supply. Germany was forced 
to resort to extreme militarism in order to achieve 
efficiency. Without that efficiency the German 
Empire would long ago have been destroyed. 
The United States, on the other hand, is inefficient 
in organized endeavor of government. Our re- 
publicanism has developed individualism and char- 
acter, but has failed to provide us with unity as 
a nation. 









102 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

It has been explained that a fleet is not only 
for the defense of the nation, but also is the force 
behind a policy believed to be essential to the 
growth of the nation. Therefore, those who con- 
trol the policies of the nation must consult with 
the naval and military authorities in order to ob- 
tain their expert advice on the military strength 
required by the United States to maintain its 
policies, by war if need be. A policy cannot be 
maintained through arbitration unless the nation 
is strong enough to enforce arbitration. 1 Arbitra- 
tion plus force is a fact, but arbitration without 
force is a dream. Now the fault lies not only in 
that our statesmen seldom consult with the naval 
and military authorities, but in that, when they 
do obtain their advice, they refuse to accept it 
and, instead, advance their own opinions as to 
the country's preparedness, and act upon those 
opinions. 

Since 1903 the general board of the navy, whose 
duty it is to study the fleets of foreign nations 
and recommend a naval programme to meet our 
international requirements, has advised the build- 
ing of two dreadnaughts a year as a minimum. 
Failing to provide this minimum number for 
several consecutive years, four were advised. 
This latter advice has been given each secretary 

1 This was most emphatically proved in the case of the Alabama 
claims after our Civil War. 



OUR NAVAL REQUIREMENTS 103 

of the navy since 19 10, but has never been ac- 
cepted. 1 The result is that we have dropped from 
second place to third place, and this loss in rank- 
ing has been not only a material one, but also a 
moral one, for the personnel of our navy is to-day 



1 The general board, in 1904, was instructed to prepare a programme 
of construction that would assure the United States a navy ade- 
quate to present requirements and future possibilities. The board 
submitted its report and proceeded from year to year, in accordance 
with its instructions, to recommend the number of ships Congress 
should authorize in order to keep the actual construction up to the 
requirements of the policy formulated by the board. 

The ships recommended to Congress from 1904 to 1914, inclusive, 
included all types from the biggest battleships to colliers. Congress 
put its "enlightened" civilian wisdom against the scientific knowl- 
edge of the highly trained members of the general board, and per- 
sistently cut down the number of ships asked for. How Congress 
has slighted the advice of the general board, and how Congress it- 
self has known from year to year that it has been making a travesty 
of our naval construction policy, are shown by placing in tabular 
form the recommendations of the general board and the performances 
of Congress. The following table, covering the period 1904-7, is 
illustrative of the apathy of the people's representatives: 





1904" 


1905 


1906 


1907 


Total 4 
years 


Total ships, all types, recommended 


IS 

14 

2 

1 


27 
2 
3 
2 


23 

12 

3 

1 


20 
3 

2 

1 


85 

31 

10 

5 


Total authorized by Congress 

Battleships asked for by board 

Battleships authorized by Congress 



This table shows that, in four years, the ships of all classes au- 
thorized by Congress were only a little more than a third of those 
recommended by the general board, or exactly 36 per cent, while the 
proportion of battleships authorized to those asked for was fifty 
per cent. In the decade, 1904-14, the general board recommended 
a total of 326 ships of all classes, and Congress authorized only 153, 
or 20 fewer than half. Each year the recommendations of the board 



104 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

so inadequate that many of our fighting units are 
mere shams. 1 

This lack of co-ordination between statesman- 
ship and military force occurs on account of the 
absence of a responsible head of our government, 
and the shameful situation has continued because 
the people have been often kept in ignorance and 
have been taught their history only from highly 
colored accounts. There should be no doubt in 
the mind of any thinking man that there must be 
a definite responsibility for war preparedness. 

In the last analysis it is the people who gov- 

and the demands of the Navy Department have been discussed at 
congressional committee hearings which have been reported sten- 
ographically and republished in the newspapers. If the public has 
not been informed it is because the popular mind has been distracted 
from the consideration of the question of national defense by the 
claims of the peace enthusiasts that there would be no more war, 
and by the belief that Uncle Sam can "lick all creation," prepared 
or unprepared. 

The navy has two great departments, that of material and that 
of personnel. The preceding table shows how Congress has responded 
to the urgings of the general board as to the property needed for the 
navy. On that all-important question of the personnel, one needs 
but to glance over the pages of the Proceedings of the U. S. Naval 
Institute and other service publications to appreciate how thoroughly 
the shortcomings of the United States navy in the matter of per- 
sonnel have already been set before the American people. 

1 "In addition to the number at present authorized by law, there are 
needed to complete the complements of all the ships at present on 
the Navy Register, 933 officers, and 18,556 men, while in 21 battle- 
ships in commission, and now composing the Atlantic fleet, there is 
a shortage of 5,219 men and 339 officers required to fill all stations 
necessary to efficiently fight the ships in battle." (Rear-Admiral 
F. F. Fletcher to the chairman of the House Naval Committee, 
January 14, 1915.) 



OUR NAVAL REQUIREMENTS 105 

ern, it is the people who must be informed of their 
military condition. The regulations which for- 
bid military and naval men writing for publication 
for the purpose of discussion should be rewritten. 
The freest discussion on all military and naval 
topics by officers of both services should be en- 
couraged, such writings to be signed by the 
authors, for which they would assume the entire 
responsibility. When this privilege has been 
given, then the people will have a means of get- 
ting at the truth, and the authority in each case 
will be known. Sealing the lips of those capable 
of giving the truth, we have encouraged scare- 
head articles upon our naval preparedness, which 
carry little weight and make no lasting impression 
upon the minds of the people. 

If the recommendations of the general board 
of the navy since 1903 had been followed, the 
United States would now possess a naval force 
equal to that of any nation except England. The 
expense of construction and maintenance would 
have been spread over a number of years and 
would hardly have been felt. But now we are 
suffering from the accumulation of error. We 
find ourselves hopelessly short of battleships, 
battle cruisers, armored cruisers, cruisers, de- 
stroyers, submarines, and auxiliaries of all kinds. 
In the Caribbean, where, no doubt, will be waged 
our next naval war in the Atlantic, there has been 



106 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

provided no suitable base from which the fleet 
can operate — the navy having been refused the 
development of its most vital base — Guantanamo 
Bay. Our army is too small to furnish the neces- 
sary troops to protect the Panama Canal, to man 
the defenses of Hawaii and the guns on Corre- 
gidor Island in Manila Bay. The personnel of 
all of our coast fortifications on the Atlantic and 
the Pacific is at less than half strength. It is 
now possible to man only from one-third to one- 
half the guns of our coast fortifications with trained 
coast artillerymen. Our ammunition supply for 
the navy is now almost sufficient for war purposes/ 
But, on the other hand, not a single United States 
battleship afloat to-day is equipped with modern 
long-range torpedoes, our mine defenses are in- 
adequate in number, and our aeroplane service 
has been permitted to stand still for several years, 
while other nations have rapidly progressed. 

Admiral Mahan often endeavored to force home 
to us the appreciations of political conditions as 
an essential factor in all military plans. "When 
Germany shall have finished the ships contem- 
plated in the naval programme which she has 
formally adopted," he wrote, "she will have a 
navy much superior to that of the United States 
unless we change our present rate of building and 
also provide more extensive plants. Where, then, 
will be the Monroe Doctrine, and where the secur- 



OUR NAVAL REQUIREMENTS 107 

ity of the Panama Canal? The enforcement of 
both these depends upon the fleet." He then 
went on to show how "the superior fleet domi- 
nates if the margin of superiority be sufficient. It 
is the question of political relations which intro- 
duces perplexing factors; and the military adviser 
of a government is not competent to his task un- 
less, by knowledge of conditions and practice in 
weighing them, he can fairly estimate how far in- 
ferior numbers may be reinforced by the pressure 
which other conditions may bring on a possible 
enemy. Every naval officer should order his 
study and his attention to contemporary events, 
abroad and at home, by the reflection that he 
may some day be on a general staff, and in any 
case may beneficially affect events by his correct 
judgment of world-wide conditions." 

There is much presented to us in the above 
paragraph for earnest reflection. How far do 
Germany's relations with other European states 
permit her embarking her fleet on a transatlantic 
adventure? If, perchance, Germany finds her- 
self free after this war in Europe to send to the 
Caribbean a superior fleet, then our Monroe Doc- 
trine will be put aside. In our long contention 
with England over the Monroe Doctrine, our 
progress was due, not to the size of our navy, 
which was ludicrously small, but, as Admiral 
Mahan said, to the political relations of England 



io8 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 



with other powers, which made it unwise for her 
to embark in a contest with the United States. 

It does not take naval learning to conclude 
that the United States is too weak on the seas, 
that we require more battleships, more cruisers, 
more destroyers, more submarines, more auxil- 
iaries, and more naval bases, and that we would 
also be wise to build a division of battle cruisers, 
which have not only the offensive power of modern 
battleships, but also the greatly higher speed es- 
sential to long-distance scouting. 1 Furthermore, 

1 When the battle cruiser first came into prominence in the foreign 
navies, our naval officers were quick to realize the importance of 
this new class of fighting craft, which is merely a development and 
improvement of the old type of armored cruiser. If the recommenda- 
tions of the general board since 1904 had been followed by Congress, 
it would have been possible to build battle cruisers for our navy when 
the type first came out without imperiling our rank in battleship 
strength. But the refusal of Congress to listen to expert advice 
retarded the development of our fleet along the most advanced lines. 
As a result, the situation in which we find ourselves to-day is as fol- 
lows: Our fastest battleship, the Wyoming, has a speed of 21.22 
knots. Our fastest armored cruiser (carrying 10-inch guns) is the 
North Carolina, with a speed of 22.48 knots. But how completely 
outclassed both of these ships are by the corresponding capital ships 
of foreign navies is demonstrated in the following table: 



Fastest Battle Type Ship 


Type 


Dis- 
place- 
ment 
Tons 


Speed 
Knots 


Armament 


Queen Mary (England) . . . 

Seydlitz (Germany) 

Kongo (Japan) 


Battle cruiser 
Battle cruiser 
Battle cruiser 
Battleship 

Armored cruiser 


27,000 
24,385 
27,500 
26,000 

14,500 


35-7 

29.0 
28.0 
21.22 

22.48 


8 13-inch 
10 11-inch 

8 14-inch 
12 12-inch 

4 10-inch 


Wyoming (United States) . 

North Carolina (United 

States) 





OUR NAVAL REQUIREMENTS 109 

and this is more important than any other single 
consideration, our navy must have units of trained 
men, and all the fighting ships of the fleet must be 
manned or else stricken from the list of available 
vessels for war. 

We are told by naval experts that in case of 
hostilities the duty of the navy is to further mili- 
tary operations designed to bring hostilities to a 
speedy and favorable conclusion, and also to gain 
command of the sea in order that our commerce 
may continue as tranquilly as in times of peace. 
This control of the sea is not a concrete thing in 
itself. It does not assure every merchantman 
flying our flag safety from capture by the enemy's 
vessels. But it does assure a steady flow of com- 
merce to and from our home ports. For the busi- 
ness of controlling the sea, the prime factor is a 
dominating force of capital ships, capable of 
moving swiftly and carrying with it sufficient 
power to dominate any disturbed locality of the 
ocean. Command of the sea gives the nation 
that has won it the power to interrupt at will the 
commerce of the enemy, to convoy, without un- 
due risk, troops from the home country to the 
enemy's territory, and to deny the sea to the 
enemy's troop-ships. A nation at war will desire 
primarily to seek out, with its fleet, the enemy's 
squadrons for the purpose of destroying them. 
If the enemy refuses action and remains in its 



no OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

own fortified bases, then it must be blockaded 
and prevented from interfering with commerce. 
It has often been shown that in all wars one fleet, 
the stronger, has endeavored to bring the other 
to action, while the latter has attempted to avoid 
action. If fleets were composed solely of battle- 
ships, then the commerce of each nation would 
remain safe until it came into the area controlled 
by the fleet of its enemy. In order to be able to 
keep the heavy fighting ships concentrated, na- 
tions have built cruisers of high speed for the 
purpose of preying upon the commerce of the 
enemy while their fighting ships are employed 
against the fighting ships of the enemy. By 
means of these cruisers, operating over vast areas 
of the sea, the nation possessing them has been 
able materially to affect the financial resources 
of its opponent, and eventually to force the en- 
emy's battle fleet, in desperation, to give battle. 

Upon the outbreak of the war in Europe, Ger- 
many had a number of fast cruisers on the high 
seas. While the German battle fleet lay bottled 
up in German ports, these corsairs roamed the 
ocean, playing havoc with the mighty commerce 
of Great Britain; but lacking bases and depending 
only upon their speed, they were, with one or 
two exceptions, soon rounded up and destroyed 
by the numerically stronger cruisers of the Brit- 
ish fleet, which were sent out against them. And 



OUR NAVAL REQUIREMENTS in 

now that the German cruisers have been prac- 
tically annihilated, the control of the seas lies 
absolutely with the Allies, while the German 
merchant marine has been swept away. But 
cruisers of this type, designed for the purpose of 
preying on the enemy's commerce, may be said 
not to exist in our fleet. Nor have we the means 
of preventing depredations of the enemy's com- 
merce destroyers, or the raids of his high-powered 
battle cruisers. There is not on the navy list of 
the United States to-day a single cruiser that could 
have overtaken the Emden. 

Since the strategical advantage of being able 
to sweep the seas of the enemy's commerce is 
denied us, the small merchant marine that we 
have will fear to leave port while the enemy's 
cruisers are at large. We thus see that even 
with a superior fleet we would not be able to com- 
mand the trade routes, except in the immediate 
vicinity of our battle fleet. Our merchandise in 
neutral bottoms might even be seized by the 
enemy's cruisers, and all merchandise bound to 
United States ports might be declared contra- 
band and turned back by enemy's vessels after 
visit and search. We would then find ourselves 
in a very anomalous position: having a superior 
fleet yet forced to permit the weaker enemy to 
control the carrying trade routes. Therefore, 
can we not see that by refusing to keep pace with 




H2 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

probable enemies in fast vessels of the cruiser 
type, we are permitting any one to hold against 
us a distinct and valuable handicap? If, by 
chance, we operate at a distance from our base, 
it will be necessary for our fleet to depend upon 
shipments of coal, oil, and supplies from home. 
How, then, shall we be assured that these vessels 
carrying those things that our fleet so urgently 
needs, will reach the fleet safely ? The answer is 
childishly simple. We cannot ! They will be 
open to the raid of the enemy's fast cruisers, 
against which we are impotent. Our fleet may 
even find itself derelict for want of the necessities 
to its continued mobility. If we should endeavor 
to convoy our supplies, using battleships for the 
purpose, our navy would risk annihilation while 
so divided. 

If, perchance, the nation takes its lesson from 
the war in Europe, and gives an impetus to the 
building of a merchant marine, our weakness in 
cruisers will become more manifest, and our loss 
during a war would be more disastrous. Thus, 
we see that our development of types has been 
based upon faulty conceptions of naval warfare. 
But even if the enemy were willing to do that 
which would be most advantageous to us in case 
we had a superior fleet, i. e., to come out and fight 
us, then, once the decision being won, our battle- 
ships and other fighting units could be scattered 



OUR NAVAL REQUIREMENTS 113 

for the purpose of protecting our commerce, but 
we can hardly expect our enemy to be so obliging. 
He will do that which will inconvenience us most, 
and when war has begun we shall sorely regret our 
neglect of that class of vessel which alone can 
safeguard our commerce during the continuance 
of hostilities. Furthermore, the service of scout- 
ing by cruisers, although appearing auxiliary, is 
of capital importance. Our lack of scouts for the 
fleet places the navy in a position of manifest in- 
feriority to a probable enemy. This omission 
will, in war, compel our fleet to act without definite 
information of the movements of the enemy's 
force. 

We thus see that the control of the sea, in the 
case of a nation having no fast cruisers, is encom- 
passed within the narrow area through which the 
battle fleet moves, while shipping upon the re- 
mainder of the ocean will lie vulnerable to attack 
by the enemy's fast cruisers. On the other hand, 
the submarine has had a meteoric entrance into 
publicity in the present war, which has thrown 
many of our citizens, most noticeably those in 
Congress, off their mental balance. They have 
argued that since a submarine may, under favor- 
able circumstances, be able to sink a battleship, 
therefore the battleship is doomed, and should not 
be perpetuated. The same argument could as 
readily be applied to the mine, which is twice as 



H4 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

powerful as the torpedo. The submarine is a 
weapon of opportunity, as is the mine. We must 
not mistake the end for the means. The end is 
the control of the sea. Force must be opposed by- 
force. The radius of activity of a submarine is 
limited. It is simply a projectile launched from a 
naval base, capable of operating to a limited dis- 
tance ; then it must return to that base. A battle- 
ship, or a cruiser, is a projectile of greater range. 
It may be fired for thousands of miles, and may 
roam and operate and destroy for weeks at a time. 
The battleship is the 14-inch shell, while the sub- 
marine is a missile of minor caliber. The sub- 
marine on the surface has no chance against a 
vessel armed with a gun, and while submerged its 
effective cruising radius is restricted. The evolu- 
tion of the submarine is tending upward. Before 
many years we may see a submarine capable of 
accompanying the battleship fleet. It will be 
used in naval actions as is the destroyer. It 
will submerge to escape pursuit while the de- 
stroyer uses its speed. But battleships will remain 
the mistresses of the seas, and the nation having 
the greatest force of battleships will retain con- 
trol of the seas. Those nations that read incor- 
rectly the true evolution of types, and depart on 
eccentric missions, will find themselves left be- 
hind in the race for domination. We thus see 
the necessity for a well-rounded fleet. Each unit 



OUR NAVAL REQUIREMENTS 115 

has been evolved for its particular part in war. 
Our present unpreparedness in these essential 
auxiliaries will be difficult to correct, and the 
blame for these omissions will be as difficult to 
locate. The question, however, is not where has 
our maladministration led us, but do the Ameri- 
can people desire to see continued a condition of 
affairs that will lead to certain disaster ? 



CHAPTER VII 

MILITARY POLICY 

MILITARY policy determines the prepara- 
tion made by a nation in support of its 
international policy. Military policy is 
ambitious where the nation's diplomacy is ambi- 
tious. It naturally receives its impetus through 
the necessities of the nation. A nation having 
nothing to lose need have no military policy. A 
nation having much to lose requires a strong and 
consistent policy. But a strong military policy 
does not necessarily mean militarism. It means 
simply that the nation will systematically cultivate 
its muscles and strengthen the moral tone of its 
structure. It assures that the treaties in which 
the nation has entered will be enforced. 

The peculiar position of our country is such 
that the best and most efficient security is offered 
by building up the military spirit among its cit- 
izens. The protection of his home is a funda- 
mental instinct of the male, but in these days 
such protection for a nation can be accomplished 
only through organization. A million men with- 
out organization are of very little use. An assem- 

116 



MILITARY POLICY 117 

blage of men untrained, undisciplined, and with- 
out leaders is nothing more nor less than a crowd 
or a mob. We all know that a crowd does not 
reason, and that it is not influenced by argument. 
Its imagination is very active. It is susceptible 
of being powerfully aroused. A crowd may, there- 
fore, be quickly thrown into a panic. Being in- 
capable of reflection and of reasoning, it cannot 
understand what is improbable, and the improba- 
ble things are the most striking. But when, on 
the other hand, a crowd has once been disciplined 
and is well led, then it becomes a powerful force. 
No one would compare the consciousness of a mob 
to that of a brigade of soldiers drawn up on the 
parade-ground for a review. In the first, there 
is no idea in common, no underlying, co-ordinating 
force ; it is simply unreasoning, and when aroused 
it knows no extremes of action and is susceptible 
to all kinds of influences. But the soldiers are 
held together by a common idea and can be con- 
trolled by the will of a leader. 

It has been said that "a people is an organism 
created by the past, which, like every organism, 
can only modify itself by slow, hereditary accumu- 
lations. Without tradition there is neither na- 
tional soul nor civilization possible. Hence the 
two great occupations of man since his existence 
have been to create for himself a system of tra- 
ditions, and then to try to destroy them when 



n8 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

their beneficial effects have been exhausted. 
Without the traditions, no civilization. Without 
the destruction of these traditions, no progress." 

Traditions represent the ideas, the needs, the 
sentiments of the past. They are the synthesis 
of the race, and bear down upon us with all their 
weight. The national traditions that cause the 
maintenance of a weak military policy are tra- 
ditions that must be destroyed, for they are now 
a danger to us. But the question is, how can they 
be destroyed? They cannot be destroyed by 
law or by the issue of decrees. Nations are gov- 
erned by their genius, and all institutions which 
are not ultimately moulded on this genius rep- 
resent but a transitory disguise. Institutions 
cannot remedy the defects in our national genius, 
and national progress will not come through per- 
fecting our institutions. 

Instruction and education will in time remove 
false traditions that should be destroyed, but this 
process is slow. A generation or more will be 
required before dangerous beliefs can be erased 
from the national mind. Unfortunately, mili- 
tary institutions are not in harmony with the 
genius of our people, and until they become so 
the attempt to make the nation a strong one will 
fail. Even though this be true, the seed must 
be planted, while time alone can produce the 
flowering tree. 



MILITARY POLICY 119 

Socialism has for one of its objects the elevation 
of the masses. Its ideal is to accomplish universal 
happiness among a people. It undertakes to feed 
the hungry, to shelter the homeless, and to drag 
down the plutocrat to a befitting level. Universal 
military service, if accepted as a fundamental 
duty, will, in effect, partially accomplish socialism. 
Military training cannot fail to elevate the masses, 
to make them capable of earning a living wage, 
and to provide suitable occupations for every 
citizen of the nation. Military training will make 
the citizen more efficient, in forcing him to see the 
necessity for an aim in life, in showing him that 
organization and co-ordination among his fellow 
men is a fundamental necessity in the progress of 
the community and of the nation. It will teach 
him efficiency in methods of doing work and, above 
all, will give him an ideal of honor and honesty 
without which a man can be nothing but a waif. 

A nation whose citizens have been trained in 
military pursuits will of itself discard those polit- 
ical shams of government where the community 
is ruled and robbed by the "boss" politician. 
The offices in our government service, instead of 
being filled through favor by these same politi- 
cians to work their own selfish ends, would be 
filled, as they are in France and England, by men 
who had served their country faithfully as sol- 
diers and were ready at their country's call to re- 



120 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

turn again to the active duties in which they had 
been trained. 

Even now, with a small army and navy, those 
men who have gone out of the services find no 
difficulty in obtaining positions of trust and ad- 
vantage. They are sought after by the great 
commercial companies, by the railroads, by the 
fire departments and police departments because 
they are recognized to be efficient, self-respecting, 
and trustworthy. When these men compete in 
civil life with those who have not had the military 
training the contrast is striking. Universal mil- 
itary service will give every citizen this necessary 
postgraduate course to fit him to take his place 
in an orderly and well-organized community. 

The faults of our military policy have been 
caused primarily by a faulty conception in our 
organization of government. When our ances- 
tors framed our Constitution they feared to place 
too much authority in the hands of one man or 
one body of men. They thought that liberty 
would be conserved better by a divided authority. 
The President, the legislature, and the judiciary 
are therefore coequal. Between the two former 
the responsibility of a lack of a continuous mil- 
itary policy rests. The President may be in favor 
of a strong military policy, and he has the oppor- 
tunity in his annual message to Congress, or 
through special messages, of expressing his views, 



MILITARY POLICY 121 

yet the legislature may not agree with the opinions 
of the chief magistrate. Congress reflects the 
will of the people. Congress can go no faster 
than the people. When the country knows and 
speaks its mind, Congress will not fail to act ; but 
its act will be a tardy one, for time is required 
for such a body of men to be convinced that they 
have heard aright. 

Our legislature, therefore, follows the people; 
it does not lead them. Congress holds the purse- 
strings, and, being responsible by law for the 
money allotted, naturally desires accurate and 
comprehensive statistics as to how the money is 
to be spent. Congress or the committees of 
Congress having jurisdiction over a particular 
appropriation bill, feel that the entire respon- 
sibility and authority belongs to them. Congress 
is too large to work as a unit. In order to accom- 
plish results it has been forced to divide itself into 
innumerable committees that handle the appro- 
priations for government service. A new appro- 
priation bill is built up on the structure of the 
one of the year previous. Many items of the bill 
are repeated from year to year; others are new 
items. An appropriation bill for one of the great 
military services, carrying over a hundred mil- 
lions of dollars, contains as many as three hundred 
separate items, each with a definite amount of 
money to be spent on that item alone before the 



122 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

end of the fiscal year, and if not spent that money 
returns to the treasury. In many of the items of 
an appropriation bill, framed in a committee of 
Congress, congressmen may have more than a 
political or national interest. Much of this money 
is to be spent in their own congressional districts. 
They have fathered such of these items and have 
insisted, maybe, against the sound technical ad- 
vice of military men, that these items remain 
in the bill, threatening, if they should be removed, 
that their vote would be cast against items in the 
bill that are more vital to the welfare of the na- 
tion. Some of the congressmen may have been 
influenced by business men who are financially 
interested in certain items which are being op- 
posed as unwise and unnecessary by the technical 
officers of the army or navy. These congressmen 
are not necessarily dishonest. They may have 
been convinced by the fluent and persuasive 
manufacturers' lobbyists that what they have to 
sell is absolutely necessary for the welfare of the 
country. The consequent result of this quality 
of legislation is to give the army and navy only a 
part of the things they need and a great many 
things that they have no use for at all. Economy 
is sacrificed and for these unnecessary items the 
government spends its money. Army posts, 
which should have been abandoned long ago, 
lying within the district of politically powerful 



MILITARY POLICY 123 

congressmen, receive large money appropriations 
yearly for up-keep and even for extensions after 
the general staff of the army have advised their 
abandonment. Needless navy-yards are kept 
open and large sums of money are annually spent 
on them, when the general board has year after 
year advised their closing for the sake of economy 
and efficiency. And this, not because Congress 
believed they were more competent to decide 
than the naval experts, but because their own 
interests, no doubt, often swayed their judgment. 

If the matter were not so serious, it would be 
ludicrous to see our Naval Committee, after taking 
testimony from all the professional sources at 
their command, in the end allow party affilia- 
tions, as it would seem, to control their decision. 
Fortunately thus far, Congress, while reducing the 
recommendations of the General Board of the 
Navy, has not radically departed from them, but it 
is easily within its power, if party politics require 
it, to disregard altogether the labors of that intelli- 
gent body and substitute for their expert recom- 
mendations those evolved in the committee discus- 
sions. 

The committee of Congress calls before it the 
heads of the executive departments, the secretary 
of war, the secretary of the navy, the chiefs of 
bureaus in the departments, the chief of staff of 
the army, commandants of navy -yards, etc., and 



124 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

puts each through a course of questions which 
form very interesting reading and are, in some 
cases, very instructive. The method of the com- 
mittee is good. The result should be to get the 
facts and be sure the money is appropriated wisely. 
But, unfortunately, each witness before the com- 
mittee too often endeavors to obtain for his par- 
ticular office the maximum of funds, for the 
greatest power is wielded by the official having 
the largest appropriation for his bureau or office. 
The secretary of war and the secretary of the 
navy are undoubtedly honest in their intentions, 
as are all the officers called before the committee, 
but their opinions are one-sided and never, by 
any chance, co-ordinate. The method is one of 
competition between departments and bureaus; 
each witness is an advocate of his own supposed 
needs, without first fitting those needs to the re- 
quirements of the service as a whole. Their 
opinions betray the lack of a co-ordinating mili- 
tary education. A reading of the hearings before 
a committee of Congress reveals the startling 
fact that no one has a real conception of the 
basic purpose and use of the army and navy. 
The desire actuating each of them is to obtain 
enough money to get through the following year, 
not to make the army and navy efficient for the 
purpose of defending the country. There is no 
one military individual, except the chief of staff 



MILITARY POLICY 125 

of the army, who has knowledge comprehensive 
enough at his disposal to bring the point of mil- 
itary efficiency clearly to view. The chief of staff 
of the army is the responsible military head of the 
army. He has under him a body of trained offi- 
cers whose study is entirely along the lines of mil- 
itary efficiency. Unfortunately for him, he is the 
head of no financial bureau and, in consequence, 
as a witness before the congressional military com- 
mittee his testimony is not received with enthu- 
siasm. But he is a thorn in the side of the military 
committee. He gives them facts which they can- 
not refute. He puts his fingers on weak spots in 
the appropriation bills. He shows where money, 
which should be used for the defense of the nation, 
is being wasted. His co-workers discover the 
many tricks and military flaws in the appropria- 
tion bill, and he endeavors jto have them removed. 
In Elihu Root the army most fortunately had a 
secretary of war influential enough to obtain for 
that branch of the service the legal establishment 
of a general staff. Its creation somewhat weak- 
ened the prestige and power of the military com- 
mittee. The congressional committee cannot 
stand up against its organized technical knowl- 
edge. But though there are often good business 
men on that committee, they know little of the 
military needs of the army, and they cannot 
therefore understand why, if a large amount of 



126 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

money is spent on the army and navy, the con- 
sequence is not efficiency. Congress, through its 
committees, has not been able to realize that 
legislative control over executive action has dis- 
astrous results. Congress, jealous of its powers, 
fears to give due weight to military opinions and 
prefers its own judgment to the advice of men 
who have given the subject a life's study. 1 

1 See Appendix III. 



CHAPTER VIII 
NAVAL POLICY 

THE officers of our navy for years have 
realized the desirability, amounting to a 
necessity, of a geieral staff for the navy. 
They do not doubt the 1 honesty, integrity, and 
earnestness of the secretary of the navy, nor the 
willingness of Congress to have an efficient navy, 
but they see that, unless there exists a technical 
authority in control of naval progress, with ade- 
quate responsibility, great sums of money will 
continue to be spent without gaining efficiency 
for the navy. 

Under our statutes, the head of the navy is the 
secretary of the navy, who has full authority and 
no division of responsibility. He is the com- 
mander of the navy, under the President, his su- 
perior, who may control his action, as may Con- 
gress by law; but this, as far as it goes, is merely 
a transfer of responsibility in its entirety. The 
secretary of the navy has no associates, he has 
only subordinates. In them he has capable ad- 
visers, so far as he chooses to use them, but they 
are not legally constituted advisers, and there is 

127 



128 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

in their position nothing which compels the secre- 
tary to hear their advice, still less to accept it. 
Unity of action between the several naval tech- 
nical experts is not provided for by law. The mil- 
itary efficiency of our navy depends, then, entirely 
upon the co-ordinating force of the secretary, who 
is a civilian. What may result from this vital 
defect in our system of naval administration is 
not pleasant to consider. The secretary of the 
navy, believing his authority and responsibility 
to be unlimited, can dive down into the very 
bowels of a battleship and make a change in policy 
or reverse the time-honored traditions of the ser- 
vice. The range of his arm is unlimited; against 
its strength the navy has no redress; the entire 
efficiency of the fleet for battle may be upset and 
rendered futile by one stroke of his pen. 

A fleet, with all that goes with it, has a reason 
for its existence. That reason is not for show, or 
to make a spectacular display, or to give work 
to labor unions at navy-yards, or to build up a 
political reputation, or to gain votes for senators 
and congressmen; it is for the purpose of en- 
gaging in battle with the fleet of that enemy which 
may challenge us in our struggle for national ex- 
istence. That enemy stands between our fleet 
and life. Our congressmen and secretaries can 
appreciate the necessity of team-work in a base- 
ball nine, and yet — it seems incredible — they do 



NAVAL POLICY 129 

not appear to see the necessity of team-work for 
the fleet, which plays a far more important game 
— the game of war. A defeat on the diamond 
results only in hurt feelings, in a transient sad- 
ness among the team and its supporters. The 
fleet's defeat means the loss of thousands of lives, 
of millions of dollars in money, of the nation's 
honor. The up-keep and the training of the fleet 
for battle cannot be done alone by the command- 
ers of the fleet. They can do their mortal best, 
but without the wise support of the Navy De- 
partment and Congress, the fleet is foredoomed 
to destruction. No one of either service desires 
to change the Constitution. But the great war 
in Europe has opened their eyes even wider, and 
shown them the brink upon which the army and 
navy stand — brought to this crucial situation by 
despotic civilian control over our military poli- 
cies. The blame for this rests not with individ- 
uals, but in the faulty conceptions held by those 
who overstep and override military advice on 
military matters. 

In the next year we shall see a sudden awaken- 
ing throughout the land. Our hopes are always 
for peace. Our ideals are humanitarian. Our 
desire is to continue quietly on the path of our 
policies. We have no wish to acquire more ter- 
ritory, nor do we desire aught but our share in 
the commerce of the world. We have seen that 



130 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

to gain these ends we must keep the nation from 
becoming obese and flabby. The muscles in our 
arms must not get soft. Those who are crying 
out against armaments and militarism, and per- 
suading us to put our trust in treaties, will be 
disregarded. Weak statesmen may attempt to 
undermine such legislation, which they fear may 
upset their calculation for peace, but the good 
judgment of the intelligent citizens should resist 
the attempt, and see to it that our traditional 
national policies are given the military support 
which alone can perpetuate them. The United 
States can never permit a hostile Asiatic or Eu- 
ropean force to land on the soil of this continent 
for the permanent acquisition of territory. Once 
a military nation gains a foothold, then, history 
tells us, its tenure is a long one. If Germany 
should defeat the British fleet and the allied 
armies, and turn its attention upon Canada, our 
fleet must bar the way. Nor can we permit a mili- 
tary nation to land a force on this continent for 
the purpose of chastising a Central or South Amer- 
ican republic. Our safety lies in thwarting the at- 
tempt. Once the military occupation is an ac- 
complished fact, we may find ourselves incapable, 
like China, of persuading that military nation to 
evacuate. This is not a question of international 
law, but one of self-defense. 

That our navy is, to-day, not efficient for war 



NAVAL POLICY 131 

with a first-class power is no longer a secret. If 
Congress is satisfied that we must look to the 
fleet primarily to provide national defense, and 
is seriously anxious to economize the nation's 
money in order that not a cent shall be spent 
that does not increase the fleet's efficiency, is it 
not then the duty of Congress to see that these 
intentions are made good ? A congressional func- 
tion is to audit expenditures upon which our na- 
tional credit is based; why, then, is it not its 
duty to audit the fleet, upon which our national 
existence is based ? Unfortunately, Congress has 
difficulty in correctly auditing the fleet. Military 
and naval officers are held strictly to secrecy by 
departmental regulations. 1 They must make their 
protests and criticisms to the department. But 
the Navy Department resents these criticisms, 
seemingly believing that they reflect upon the 
work of the department, "it is perfectly evi- 
dent, then, that the navy cannot improve, cannot 
gain efficiency as long as such methods are en- 
forced. In all democratic countries the greatest 
progress is gained through publicity and discus- 
sion during peace. Until war approaches, secrecy, 
as a policy, is disastrous, and for this the reason 
is clear, because in our country the people govern. 
By maintaining secrecy, the rulers — the people — 

1 This secrecy, imposed in times of peace, only prevents our own 
citizens from knowing what the military authorities of other coun- 
tries already know through other channels. 



132 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

are kept in ignorance of the real efficiency of the 
fleet and of the readiness of their country for 
war. Once Congress is told that the fleet is in- 
efficient, that the army is inadequate, and that 
our vaunted safety is a myth, and once this 
knowledge is frankly admitted to the people 
through the press, then the people will supply 
the remedy. No great government organization 
can achieve efficiency through internal develop- 
ment alone. Such development takes no account 
of environment ; it takes no account of difficulties 
to be overcome; it takes no account of an enemy 
to be encountered. Government administration 
will achieve results only when there exists a force 
jealous and antagonistic, and compelling it to be 
efficient, and this force must be outside of the 
control of the administration. If the country 
were aware of a menace— a military nation armed 
and ready to strike them — then the force com- 
pelling efficiency would be supplied; but without 
this open menace to the safety of the country, 
free and open discussion upon our readiness for 
war is the only solution. 

Even blunders in the handling of the fleet should 
be given out to the nation, in order that the peo- 
ple can judge the competency of its leaders. 
Certain British admirals who were executed for 
misconduct, disloyalty, and want of courage 
during the eighteenth-century wars were, we are 
told, not culpable. Their dereliction was due to 



NAVAL POLICY 133 

an insufficient acquaintance with the methods 
and principles of the tactics of that day and to 
the defective signalling systems of that age. In 
this country we prevent the public from hearing 
of our tactical blunders, and severely censure those 
who publicly discuss them. How much wiser it 
would be to thrash the whole matter out in free 
discussion, and decide then whether these mis- 
takes and the general lack of readiness for battle 
is not due to insufficient acquaintance with the 
methods and principles of the tactics of this day. 

The unreadiness of the navy for war can be 
laid at the door of the faulty conceptions of re- 
sponsibility in organization and administration. 
Whom will the country hold responsible if our 
fleet is defeated? The statesmen of the nation 
who have failed to provide an adequate force? 
Or the secretary of the navy for not preparing 
what was given him for battle? Will the chiefs 
of the several bureaus in the Navy Department 
be held responsible for not providing the fleet 
with those necessities which are essential to its 
preparedness? Or will the commander-in-chief 
of the fleet be held responsible for not having 
brought his fleet up to the highest state of ef- 
ficiency for battle ? 

Can we not see that there must be some one 
made responsible for the war efficiency of our 
navy? Can we not appreciate that, by divid- 
ing the responsibility among many, individual 



134 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

responsibility is sacrificed and successful results 
are, in consequence, impossible? The raison 
d'etre of the navy is to afford protection to our 
shores from invasion by engaging the enemy's 
fleet. This duty is essentially a military one, and 
to intrust a civilian, an untrained man, with this, 
the military direction, is contrary to all principles 
of administration, military or business. By the 
fleet is meant the War Fleet, and not the peace 
fleets under their several commanders-in-chief. 

The secretary of the navy has a duty to per- 
form, but it is a civil duty. It concerns the pro- 
vision and preparation of a naval force for the 
purposes of state. He should bring to this duty 
a thorough business capacity, and for the exer- 
cise of the great function of which he is the head, 
he must surround himself with responsible men to 
control the different activities. His principal 
manager should be a man chosen for his wide 
knowledge of military affairs. In him the secre- 
tary should repose the most absolute confidence. 
He must be the chief military adviser to the sec- 
retary. His decisions on military subjects must 
be taken unless they conflict with the higher de- 
cisions of the state of which the secretary alone 
is the judge. In the civil duties under the secre- 
tary, managers would also have to be appointed. 
These managers should be technical men, and 
they likewise should be the secretary's advisers 
in their own special fields. The military manager 



NAVAL POLICY 135 

will perform the duties of a chief of the general 
staff of the navy, and in his office will be collected 
a trained personnel with the military wisdom re- 
quired to place the navy on a sound military 
footing, and make it ready for future campaigns 
in case war should come. 

It is evident to any student of government 
administration that efficiency is impossible in our 
army and navy, and still less in our Department 
of State, without a still higher co-ordinating au- 
thority. Such authority in other countries is 
called "The National Defense Board," "The 
Board of National Defense," or "The Elder 
Statesmen." An agitation for such an authority 
was made in this country several years ago under 
the title of "A Council for National Defense." 
The duties of such a council, composed of the 
President, the secretaries of state, war, and navy, 
the chairmen of the financial committees of Con- 
gress, the chairmen of the Senate and House 
committees on military and naval affairs, the 
presidents of the Army and Navy War Colleges, 
and the chief of staff of the army and an officer of 
the navy — all representative men of intelligence, 
of knowledge, and of prestige, selected, as it were, 
irrespective of internal politics — would be for 
the purpose of providing sufficient military power 
to accomplish the purposes of the nation. 

The Council for National Defense would supply 
the authority to whom the people of the nation 



136 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

could always appeal. This council would assume 
entire responsibility for the country's safety. 
The assumption of such a responsibility would 
demand, first, a military organization for both 
the army and navy. Its powerful influence would 
be felt by Congress. All attempts to deflect 
money for defense into less useful channels would 
be barred. The Council for National Defense 
would assure itself that, in the event of war, 
plans had been prepared beforehand to wage the 
war. It would assure itself that the military 
organization and the naval organization were 
thoroughly competent to carry on the adminis- 
tration of the army and navy under the dislocat- 
ing effects of war. It would furnish the driving 
force which does not now exist, compelling the 
War Department and the Navy Department to 
organize themselves for the business of waging 
war. In the creation of such an organization for 
war, the necessity of a military head of each 
organization, the army and navy, would be ap- 
parent. The Council for National Defense would 
exact responsibility from the chiefs of the general 
staffs, the military heads of the army and the 
navy. These chiefs would surround themselves 
with men who are capable of setting before them 
all the facts of the military system under their 
control — experts in the art of war. 

At present, for the navy there exists the gen- 



NAVAL POLICY 



137 



eral board, which each year submits to the secre- 
tary of the navy the number of ships and the 
types which, in its judgment, should be built. 
The board's recommendations are based upon a 
comprehensive study of probable opponents, and 
is usually a minimum for the needs of the country. 1 
Such a report has been submitted for the last ten 
years, but in no one year has more than one-half 
of the board's recommendation been accepted by 
Congress, or even by the secretary of the navy ! 
The board is not legalized by statute, and its 
findings can, therefore, be disregarded, as they 
generally are, if "not agreeable." The conse- 
quence has been that, while ten years ago the 
navy of the United States was second in strength 
among the great fleets of the world, it has slowly 
but surely dropped from that position. 

The following table will show the results of our 
unwise naval programme: 



ANNUAL 


DREADNAUGHT STRENGTH 




Germany 


Great Britain 


United States 




16 
20 
23 
26 
28 
30 
33 
35 


18 
26 
32 
36 
4i 
45 
49 
53 
57 


6 
8 
10 
12 
14 
16 
18 
20 
22 






1915 


1916 

1917 


1918 


1919 


1920 





1 See Appendix I. 



138 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

This table includes dreadnaughts only, for the 
older ships are fast becoming of secondary im- 
portance, and it is based upon the known naval 
policies of Germany and Great Britain since 191 2 
and, for the United States, upon the policy of two 
dreadnaughts a year, which as yet has not been 
continuously followed. It will therefore be seen 
that in 19 15, this year, Germany will have almost 
double the number of dreadnaughts in our fleet, 
while Great Britain will have thrice the number. 
Japan, on the other hand, in 191 5, when her 
four great battle cruisers are completed and her 
new dreadnaughts have joined her fleet, will 
have in dreadnaught strength a force equal to 
our own. 

It has been pointed out, and the present war 
in Europe has demonstrated the point, that the 
nation which can force its enemy to seek it out 
in waters near its great naval bases will have all 
the advantage of submarine craft and torpedo 
craft that the enemy will be denied. Our great 
fleet, waging a war in the Orient against Japan, 
would suffer casualties from the submarines' tor- 
pedoes, and the loss of a few dreadnaughts would 
quickly reduce our fleet to one of inferiority. 
The United States has that advantage over Ger- 
many, but to provide for such casualties Germany 
has built twice the fleet of the United States. 
We can, therefore, readily see that a naval war 



NAVAL POLICY 139 

against Japan requires a force sufficient to accept 
all the hazards of the Japanese submarine operat- 
ing in home waters. 

All these questions that have been so lightly 
and quickly passed upon by our civilian legis- 
lators are vital to the nation's welfare. It is time 
that the nation appreciated its dangers and de- 
manded a reorganization in the administration of 
its services of defense. 

Let us keep clearly in mind the fundamental 
fact that the creation and control of the army and 
navy are duties that should be intrusted to men 
trained for the task; that the control of such 
specialties by inexperienced statesmen or politi- 
cians can only lead to discouragement and in- 
efficiency, and furthermore, that congressional ac- 
tion taken against competent military advice 
fritters away the nation's money. The demoral- 
ization in our military organization is of such 
long standing that it is doubtful whether the evil 
can be remedied at once, for the organization of 
our naval administration is built upon so un- 
stable a foundation that it insures nothing 
but prodigality of expenditures and wasteful- 
ness. 

It is interesting to follow the development of 
our navy as shown in its annual appropriations 
for new construction. The following tables, pre- 
pared from congressional sources since the begin- 



140 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

ning of the new navy in 1883, are suggestive. 
They reveal a glaring absence of definite or con- 
tinuous policy. 



TABLE I 

Capital Ships 



YEAR 


BATTLESHIPS 


CRUISERS 


Num- 
ber 


Average 
Tonnage 


Average 
Speed 


Num- 
ber 


Average 
Tonnage 


Average 
Speed 


1883 


2 

3 

1 

2 
3 

3 
3 
2 

2 

5 

1 
2 
1 
1 
2 
2 
2 
2 
1 
1 
3 1 


6,498 

10,288 
II.340 

11,520 
n,552 

12,500 
14,948 
14,948 

16,000 
14,800 
16,000 
16,000 
20,000 
20,000 
21,825 
26,000 
27,000 
27,500 
31,400 
31,400 
32,000 


17 

16 
17 

16 
17 

18 
19 
19 

18 
17 
18 
18 
21 
21 
21 
21 
21 
20 
21 
21 
21 


3 

2 

1 
2 
7 

1 
1 
1 

9 
6 

2 

5 


3,500 

3,701 
4,413 
4,246 
3,799 

7,350 
7,350 
9,215 

6,690 
11,690 

14,500 

8,030 


16 

18 
20 
19 
19 

22 
23 
21 

18 

22 

24 


1884 


1885 


1886 


1887 


1888 


1889 


1890 


1891 


1892 


1893 


1894 


1895 


1896 


1897 


1898 


1899 












1905 


I906 


I907 


I908 


I909 


I9IO 








I9I4 





» Including the ship being constructed with the proceeds of the sale to Greece of 
the old battleships Idaho and Mississippi. 



NAVAL POLICY 



141 



TABLE II 
Torpedo Craft 



TORPEDO-BOATS AND DESTROYERS 



Number 



Average 
Tonnage 



Average 
Speed 



SUB- 
MARINES 



Number 



1886. 
1887. 
1888. 
1889. 
1890. 
1891. 
1892. 
1893. 
1894. 
1895. 
1896. 
1897. 
1898. 
1899- 
1900. 
1901. 
1902. 
1903. 
1904. 
1905. 
1906. 
1907. 
1908. 
1909. 
1910. 
1911. 
1912. 
1913- 
1914. 



105 



24 



142 
180 


24 

28 


120 
291 

370 


24 
28 

28 



3 


700 


28 


2 


700 


30 


10 


742 


30 


5 


742 


30 


6 


742 


30 


8 


1,030 


29 


6 


1,050 


29 


6 


1,105 


29 


6 


1, no 


29 



The above tables have been grouped under 
the heads of (1) vessels whose main armament is 
the gun and (2) those whose main offensive 
weapon is the torpedo. They present the num- 
ber of ships authorized in each session of Congress, 
the total tonnage appropriated for, and the aver- 



142 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

age tonnage and speed for the vessels of both 
classes from 1883 to the present time. It will be 
seen that the building policy was vacillating, both 
as to numbers and as to types. In 1886 modern 
armored ships first came into favor. In 1888 the 
first armored cruiser was laid down, and in 1890 
the first first-class battleship was built. In 1891 
only a scout cruiser was built, then in 1895 two 
battleships were laid down. From that time on 
three battleships were built each year, except in 
1897, when none was authorized. The year of 
the Spanish-American War, the monitor type 
again was favored. Then, in 1899, we undertook 
the building of large armored cruisers. The year 
following, the same was continued. Two and 
three battleships a year were built between 1902 
and 1904. Then from 1904 on, two battleships 
each year were built until 19 12 and 19 13, when 
only one was appropriated for. 

A study of our national policy during these 
years shows no marked change, yet in our naval- 
construction programme, in the number of ships 
built and in their tonnage, there was no progres- 
sive spirit. In design we followed other nations, 
principally England. But after developing a type 
of ship, a long time was wasted before the type 
was repeated and improved upon. In fact it may 
be seen that we retrograded during certain years. 
It will be noted that no armored cruisers of high 



NAVAL POLICY 143 

speed and offensive power were laid down after 
1904, nor have we added a single scout cruiser to 
our fleet since that year. 

Turning to the torpedo craft, we see that we 
began the construction of torpedo-boats as early 
as 1886, a few at a time, and by 1898, had evolved 
a vessel of nearly 300 tons, displacement. In that 
same year, the destroyer came suddenly into 
favor. Immediately following the Spanish-Amer- 
ican War, Congress followed a creditably ambi- 
tious programme, making amends, apparently, for 
its lapses during the preceding years. But, after 
laying down a large number of these vessels in 
1898, our representatives refused to appropriate 
for torpedo craft until 1906, when they began 
again to authorize a few at a time. This second 
impetus was given by the Russo-Japanese War. 
Since then the building has been more or less 
progressive. In one year, 1908, ten were laid 
down; in the remaining years, down to 19 13, half 
a dozen were authorized at each session. 

Now for the submarine. The first submarines 
built for our navy were .what is known as the 
1 ' A " type. They had a tonnage of about 60 tons, 
and seven of them altogether were built. Then the 
tonnage in the "B" type was increased to about 
125 tons. In the "C" type we developed craft 
of about 200 tons; the "D" type were of 280 
tons; the "E" type, about 300; the "F" type, 



144 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

about 310; and so on up to the present "K" and 
"L" types, which are vessels of about 500 tons. 
Class for class, these under-water craft are con- 
sidered the equal of those in foreign navies. But 
their evolution, in our case, has not been satisfac- 
torily progressive. For the boats may be said 
to have been, in practically every case, experimen- 
tal, since each class has been authorized and built 
before the previous one had been thoroughly 
tested and perfected. 

Since the general board came into existence in 
March, 1900, it has endeavored to guide the 
building policy of our navy. Its effort has not 
been entirely successful. Yet, if this able body 
of men had not existed, we should undoubtedly 
have been in a very much more precarious state 
of preparation at this date. But, what has been 
a serious omission during these years of advance 
in construction, the personnel, both officers and 
men, was not increased in proportion to the new 
tonnage commissioned, and this error has greatly 
impaired the navy's efficiency. 

It can readily be seen that the root of the 
trouble has been our lack of policy. A continu- 
ing policy, in construction and in the increase of 
personnel to keep up with the construction, can 
only be obtained through a continuing body of 
military thinkers. Congress must make use of 
organized military knowledge, such as can be 



NAVAL POLICY 145 

given only by a general staff. Sound doctrine of 
military policy is also required. This can be 
secured only through a council for national de- 
fense. 



CHAPTER IX 

NAVAL ORGANIZATION AND 
ADMINISTRATION 

ADMIRAL MAHAN said: "The test of a 
r\ system of naval administration is its ca- 
pacity — inherent, not spasmodic — to keep 
the establishment of the navy abreast of the best 
professional opinion concerning contemporary 
necessities, both in quality and quantity. It needs 
not only to know and to have what is best to-day, 
but to embody an organic provision for watching 
and forecasting to a reasonable future what will 
be demanded. This may not be trusted to vol- 
untary action or to individual initiative. There 
is needed a constituted organ to receive, digest, 
and then officially to state, in virtue of its recog- 
nized office, what the highest instructed profes- 
sional opinion, the opinion of the sea officers, 
holds concerning the needs of the navy at the 
moment and for the future, as far as present 
progress indicates. There is in the naval admin- 
istration, as constituted by law, no organized 
provision to do the evolutionary work, the sift- 
ing process, by which in civil life the rough fight- 

146 



NAVAL ADMINISTRATION 147 

ing test of supply and demand, of competition 
in open market, and free usage pronounces in- 
cisively upon the practical merits 0: various in- 
struments or methods of manufacture. The body 
of sea officers, the workmen of the navy, receive 
for use instruments upon which the system pro- 
vides them no means of expressing the profes- 
sional opinion as to their adaptability, relatively, 
to service conditions or to other existing instru- 
ments. "Whatever harm may result from this 
falls not upon the workmen only, but upon those 
also for whom the work is done; that is, the 
nation." This, from our most illustrious thinker, 
is an open plea for a naval general staff. 

The present system of independent bureaus of 
the Xavy Department has now been in operation 
for over seventy- years. It is a machine, designed 
and constructed in 1S42, but never properly put 
together as a complete whole. It is an assem- 
blage of parts which, since their first performance 
in the days of sail, have been oiled and urged 
until they have developed far beyond their orig- 
inal designed efficiency. And to-day the old parts 
still move in grooves, converging, diverging, or 
running parallel, as each part sees fit to cut its 
furrow. But within this machinery there exists 
neither motive force nor directive impulse. These 
are factors of active life that must come solely 
from without. 



148 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

The navy has been efficient under certain sec- 
retaries and has had a relapse under others. Is 
it right, is it just to the nation, that such an im- 
portant department of the government should fail 
to contain within itself the principle of continuous 
efficiency and be dependent upon chance for an 
individual to awaken it from inaction? Other 
departments of government are represented in 
the continuous interest of civil life, constituting 
an impulse more or less abiding to keep them 
abreast of the times. The navy and army have 
no such interest, and a secretary, a civilian, is not 
sufficient. As Mr. Meyer wrote in 1909: "In the 
past seven years there have been six secretaries 
of the navy." How may a civilian, lacking ex- 
pert knowledge, under such circumstances ade- 
quately direct all the varied operations of the 
naval service? The continuous interest, spoken 
of above, must be supplied. It must be some- 
thing subordinate to the secretary, embodying the 
progressive service ideas, touching the public and 
the administration ashore and afloat. This is a 
chief of the general staff and his general staff. 
This Admiral Mahan referred to when he said: 
"To supply the defect inherent in temporary 
tenure and periodical change, there is required 
for the Navy Department a tradition of policy 
analogous in fact to the principles of a political 
party, which are continuous in tradition, though 



NAVAL ADMINISTRATION 149 

progressive in modification. These run side by 
side with the policy of particular administrations; 
not affecting their constitutional powers, but 
guiding general lines of action by an influence, 
the benefit of which, through the assurance of 
continuity, is universally admitted.' * 

Organization and system are effective in con- 
trolling large operations that are beyond the 
grasp of the individual. System is the method 
by which organization works to secure desired 
results and to maintain control of every item of 
work in hand at all times. But system will be 
lacking in the Navy Department until we accept 
and act in accordance with the principles of 
organization. Organization implies forethought 
and preparation; we cannot, therefore, continue 
our unsystematized methods. The world has be- 
come too scientific. Other nations have reor- 
ganized, realizing that organization wins battles, 
and they have, in consequence, become more effi- 
cient. Organization for war means thorough and 
sound preparation for war in all its branches, 
from the higher command to every source of 
supply. 

Unfortunately for the United States, the mis- 
conception and jealousy of our politicians have 
prevented the navy from gaining the organization 
which it knows it must have if the fleet is to be 
effective in war. A Council for National Defense, 



ISO OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

being higher than the political party in power, 
could not be controlled by politics. It is there- 
fore resisted by both political parties. And the 
creation of a naval general staff, established by 
law to supply the country with a continuous and 
progressive naval policy, is likewise refused by 
Congress. 

While the appropriations for the navy have 
greatly increased during the past generation, un- 
fortunately for the navy and for the nation, all 
this capital has not been usefully invested for the 
purposes of the navy. Some of this money has 
been spent and is being spent in localities and 
for purposes which cannot possibly increase the 
battle efficiency of the fleet. In perusing the 
various items of each annual appropriation we 
must bear in mind that capital is not the physical 
thing enumerated. It is the value represented by 
them. The value, rather than the physical thing, 
is what must be accounted for. As an example: 
a naval mobilization represents the physical thing, 
but of its value what do we know ? If the service 
is highly trained for war and prepared to give 
battle, then the value of that mobilization is 
high. But if it is a mere assemblage of ships, 
inadequately manned, and furnished with in- 
effective and inefficient material, then its value is 
small, although the capital represented may be 
great. 



NAVAL ADMINISTRATION 151 

The administration of the Navy Department, 
then, consists not merely in building ships, in 
buying material, in repairing vessels, in supplying 
a personnel, in educating the enlisted men, or in 
developing our navy -yards; it is the co-ordinat- 
ing of all these duties and their welding into an 
effective instrument of war. The responsibility 
for the efficiency of that instrument of war can- 
not, therefore, be divided. Each separate activity 
must be thoroughly controlled and made to co- 
operate toward the ultimate object of developing 
the battle efficiency of the fleet. 

We saw how, in 1898, on the outbreak of the 
war with Spain, the Navy Department, finding 
itself without a military board of strategy, and 
realizing the urgent need of a regular and continu- 
ing policy in face of the emergency, was forced 
to supply those parts of its organization which in 
time of peace it had refused to create. But such 
a desperate course, adopted on the outbreak of 
hostilities with a nation well organized and well 
prepared, may not again result so happily. 

If we could keep clearly in mind the funda- 
mental reason for the existence of the navy, and 
apply this aim to all our efforts, confusion would 
be partially if not wholly eliminated. The men 
who fight the ships must control the civil output. 

In the great dockyards the same principle of 
control should obtain. Whether a navy-yard is 



152 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

in charge of a naval officer or a civilian manager, 
the output of that yard should conform to the 
requirements and standards set by the men who 
will use the ships and the material in those ships. 
For, when the military man loses control over the 
sources of supply vital to his needs, then efficiency 
vanishes and the navy decays. 

It is this definition of the word " control" that 
has, perhaps more than any other phrase, aroused 
discussion in the service. It is claimed by some 
professional writers that the line officers, they 
who will fight the ships, should entirely "control" 
the output. This does not mean that officers of 
the line should interfere with the work of the 
technical branches, but that they should pass on 
the value of the finished articles. Their training 
in the handling at sea of those articles often gives 
them the knowledge and the right to say whether 
the ships or the articles furnished them are not 
suited to the purpose. It is then the duty of the 
technical branches to endeavor to shape their 
specialties in order to comply with that decision. 
A ship is an instrument of war, and must be fash- 
ioned to do certain things. If the officers who 
use the ships find that they will not do the things 
required of them, then the technical officers must 
strive to alter them in order that they may ac- 
complish the purpose for which they were de- 
signed. The officers who fight the ships must 



NAVAL ADMINISTRATION 153 

not invade the sanctum of the technical branches. 
A choice of methods belongs to the technical 
branches, but this choice is one of interest only 
to the fighting officers. In preparing for war, 
and in war, time is an important element. Time 
is, therefore, a function of military preparedness, 
and the civil and technical branches must en- 
deavor to co-ordinate their methods in order that 
the advantage gained through the time element 
can be assured. We have already seen how the 
statesmen control the use of the military forces 
in peace and war, while the method of control 
belongs to the military. Does not this same 
analogy hold good between the military officers 
who fight the ships and the civil and technical 
officers who supply and repair the ships ? The line 
officer controls the use of the ships, but the de- 
signing and construction of those ships for their 
use belongs to those who have made the necessary 
specialties their life study. If, in an organiza- 
tion, the civil and technical branches become so 
strong and so powerful as to disregard the funda- 
mental law of military control, then we shall find 
that the articles furnished will not be suited to 
the military uses. 

The army is rapidly educating its officers in 
the art of war at the Army War College. This co- 
ordinating education will, in time, bring cohesion 
to the entire military service and make correct 



154 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

reasoning a universal attribute among the officers 
themselves. The Naval War College 1 is attempt- 
ing the same work, but its facilities are inadequate, 
and the officers allowed to attend the course are 
too few for the benefits of that education to be 
felt for some time to come. Until the entire 
navy, both line and staff, have been indoctri- 
nated in the true principles of war and war pre- 
paredness, we cannot expect efficiency for the 
navy. So long as our naval officers are unable to 
grasp clearly a uniform point of view to which all 
individual efforts must subordinate themselves, 
harmony cannot be achieved. Our civilian secre- 
taries and our congressmen of the naval com- 
mittees complain that they do not always receive 
harmonious recommendations from the officers of 
the naval service. The education in the art of 
war of the naval officer has only begun. Strange 
as it may seem, the majority of the naval officers 

1 The Naval War College is educational, not executive. It is not 
a war board, nor a naval general staff. It forms no part of the 
working organization of the Navy Department, but supplies the 
material wherewith to construct such an organization. It devotes 
itself to the study of naval history, naval strategy and tactics, the 
law of nations, and academic discussions of all conceivable types of 
naval problems of war; it supplies the alumni from which to select 
officers competent to command our fleets, as well as those able to 
solve correctly the actual problems with which a naval general staff 
is bound to be confronted, a duty — generally of a nature so con- 
fidential as to prevent its being delegated elsewhere — which should 
be the sole function of a board sufficiently strong and able to consti- 
tute, both in peace and in war, the backbone of the Department of 
the Navy. 



NAVAL ADMINISTRATION 155 

are steeped in materialism. The science of war 
has been subordinated to the science of material. 
The processes of manufacture are more interest- 
ing to the majority of them than is the use of the 
instruments in war. We go to great pains to 
design ships, and experiment with all manner of 
war material, but when it comes to the supreme 
test of all these inventions, as to how they will 
be employed, how they will be grouped, how they 
will be supplied, and how they will be fought, 
these questions we leave unanswered. 

The placing of our navy on a war footing is a 
political act of the most vital importance. In war 
as in business, successful combination, or, better, 
concentration, by which i's meant the massing of 
forces for a concerted effort, depends upon the 
efficiency of the chain of control connecting the 
brain of the organization through all activities 
down to the lowest group. It depends upon the 
intelligent action of subordinates in grasping and 
applying the plan of the leader of the organization. 
It depends upon the discipline which insures in- 
telligent obedience to the directing will of the or- 
ganization as well as on the mobility and flexi- 
bility in the organization which gives rapid effect 
to a decision by the leader and permits the taking 
advantage of fleeting opportunities. 

In the Navy Department, for seventy years 
results have been accomplished only through 



156 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

voluminous correspondence, regulations, and in- 
structions which have sapped the enthusiasm 
and initiative of every subordinate of the navy. 
The intelligent, loyal exercise of initiative is the 
true secret of success in war as in business. Initia- 
tive is the word which expresses the mental quali- 
ties of the subordinate who, knowing the general 
policy of the organization in which his activity 
is a unit, strives to attain the result desired by 
going beyond the letter of his instructions while 
obeying them in the spirit. If, therefore, subor- 
dinate officers are to exercise initiative, they must 
know the general policy of the military leader of 
the organization and the result to be attained. 
Then, with his knowledge of his specialty, he can 
achieve results by devising methods to accomplish 
the aim desired. The principles of the art of war 
for the navy must be passed through a critical 
and constructive mind, and become a general 
body of instructions before they can be of prac- 
tical use. Whether in war or in the preparation 
for war, that critical and constructive mind will 
be the group mind of a reflective and inquiring 
general staff adequately provided with an instru- 
ment of research in the form of a cultured and well- 
endowed historical section. Before there can be 
good practice there must be a true theory, and 
true theory can be acquired only from historical 
study pursued according to recognized methods. 



NAVAL ADMINISTRATION 157 

Theory cannot have an independent existence. It 
must always derive its sustenance from fresh con- 
tact with the historical reality of which it is the 
abstract. On the other hand, historical study 
which does not yield a theory is barren and use- 
less. Such a group mind has its being in our 
existing general board, but what authority has 
such a body when it is shorn of the responsibility 
of carrying out its recommendations ? Until this 
grave defect in our organization of the navy is 
changed, inefficiency will increase year by year, 
as its material and the number of its personnel 
grow larger. 1 

1 Since this chapter was written Congress passed the naval appro- 
priation bill which included a provision for the creation of a legal- 
ized chief of naval operations. This is most important legislation 
in the right direction. But it took almost thirty years to obtain 
this concession from our legislators. 



CHAPTER X 

THE EMPLOYMENT OF THE FLEET 

THE correct employment of the fleet is to be 
found in the consideration that the fleet 
is an instrument of national policy. Its 
efficiency is, therefore, to increase the prestige of 
the government's diplomacy. It is a weapon 
which diplomacy holds ready for use when the 
occasion demands, in order to preserve the life 
and happiness of the nation against outside foes. 
Its duties in time of peace are, on the other hand, 
twofold: (i) to thoroughly prepare itself so as 
to be ready, immediately upon the outbreak of 
war, to take the initiative against the enemy's 
fleet; (2) to protect our national and commercial 
interests in every foreign land. 

It will be seen that, in their accomplishment, 
these two services are conflicting. This knowl- 
edge has, therefore, caused the evolution of a 
type of vessel to be used for the second duty only. 
These ships need be only small in tonnage, for 
they are merely the symbol of force in the diplo- 
macy of the nation. Their guns are their badge 
of duty, not for use in war with a great power, 

158 



EMPLOYMENT OF THE FLEET 159 

but against unorganized mobs in countries where 
the full benefits of civilization have not pene- 
trated. The number of these peace ships, or 
vessels of diplomacy, will depend upon the extent 
of the nation's responsibilities abroad. This duty 
might also be performed by vessels in reserve, or 
by the small cruisers of a fleet, when not actively 
engaged in manoeuvres with the fleet. 

The first step required in the preparing of a 
fleet for war is the making of a plan for the em- 
ployment of the entire available fleet of the na- 
tion at least once a year in manoeuvres, to con- 
tinue until the commander-in-chief is satisfied that 
the weapons intrusted to his care are sufficient 
for the nation's purpose. The plan-making body, 
the general staff, or, in the absence of one, the 
general board, should complete the plan for the 
mobilization exactly in the manner that they 
would prepare the navy for war, except that the 
auxiliary vessels necessary to supply the fleet in 
a distant area of operations need not always be 
fitted out. But how could such a mobilization 
be held when we have neither officers nor men 
for our ships in ordinary, nor the reserves to call 
upon in case of emergency? With what Con- 
gress has given it, the navy annually accomplishes 
more in war games and tactical work than any 
other navy in the world. Ours is a real sea-going 
navy— a "fleet in being." But its organization 



i6o OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

is not such that it could expand in times of mo- 
bilization or of war. Its organization is, on the 
contrary, fictitious and planned solely to give a 
constant uniform amount of work at the navy- 
yards. It is a fleet organization that, if mobilized 
for actual exercise, would reveal weaknesses ap- 
parent even to the most casual observer. 

Upon the completion of a mobilization, the fleet 
should be divided for manoeuvres and a problem 
devised in order that the commanders of each di- 
vision or squadron will be given an opportunity to 
handle their ships against an opponent, in the man- 
ner that would be done in war. It is unnecessary 
to go further in the description of such a mobiliza- 
tion and manoeuvres. All nations that have navies 
worthy of the name carry on manoeuvres each 
year. Their records can be found in all the cur- 
rent foreign journals and in naval annuals. The 
United States alone refuses to expend the neces- 
sary money to train its fleet systematically in this 
most improved and scientific manner. 

If, by chance, the navy of the United States 
were mobilized in the manner described above, 
we should find that the personnel of the navy was 
totally inadequate to put in effective commission 
all our fighting units. There would be lacking 
18,556 trained men and 933 line officers to fully 
man the vessels now on our navy list. The war 
material available would not fill half our needs. 



EMPLOYMENT OF THE FLEET 161 

We should find that our destroyers had only one 
torpedo per tube. Having expended over $1,000,- 
ooo for a destroyer, the nation refuses to spend 
more than $50,000 for the weapons which alone 
make it useful. This same defect we should find 
in our submarines, while for the ships that we have 
armed with guns we may discover a deficiency in 
powder and shell. Such a mobilization and, 
afterward, free criticism of the existing condi- 
tions by the naval officers themselves, will be the 
only effective method of bringing to the notice of 
the country the unpreparedness of our fleet. Then 
a remedy will be applied. Unfortunately, the 
navy has been so long the football of politicians 
that each party in power fears the exposures 
which will result from such a proceeding, and, 
having the power to stop it, exercises that power 
and leaves the nation in ignorance of the true 
condition of its defenses. 

In a small way actual manoeuvres have been 
attempted by our fleet, but they have been held 
only in miniature, and were quite disappointing 
to the officers who participated in them. Naval 
officers who are asked the question will deplore 
the lack of real war manoeuvres in the war train- 
ing of the fleet. They appreciate the necessity 
for them, yet an obstacle insurmountable stands 
in the way. For such manoeuvres money is re- 
quired; but the legislators will not appropriate 



1 62 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

the funds to cover their expense. If the navy 
were a baseball team, Congress would understand 
that it was necessary for it to play rival teams to 
perfect its team-work in order to fit it to play 
ball. It would know that simply practising 
pitching, batting, and throwing the ball around 
does not develop the team-work necessary to beat 
a rival team. The navy is permitted to hold 
target practice, which is analogous to the "bat- 
tery" practice and throwing the ball. It is per- 
mitted to take cruises, which may be likened to 
running the bases. It is permitted to hold tac- 
tical drills, which correspond to batting prac- 
tice and catching flies. But at no time during 
the year is it permitted, as a team, to play ball, 
to engage in war manoeuvres on an extensive 
scale, with all the units necessary in war — bat- 
tleships, cruisers, scouts, destroyers, submarines, 
auxiliaries, tenders, fuel ships, and hospital ships — 
yet until these manoeuvres are held successfully 
every year the fleet cannot be considered as pre- 
pared. 

Why the battleship fleet should remain on the 
Atlantic coast is a subject that has often been 
discussed. The reason is evident. The Atlantic 
coast of the United States is the centre of wealth 
and the centre of all the mechanical and industrial 
activities of the nation. There the great fleet can 
be kept prepared and maintained in repair in time 



EMPLOYMENT OF THE FLEET 163 

of peace. The facilities on the Pacific coast, on 
the other hand, are inadequate. The Pacific coast 
is far removed from the sources of metal and fuel, 
the vital necessities required in the fleet's up- 
keep. The opening of the Panama Canal has 
made our coast continuous, and the fleet is now 
able to move as a unit from one end of the coast- 
line to the other to wherever danger may threaten. 
All that is needed for the protection of the coast 
is a delaying force, consisting of shore batteries, 
soldiers, submarines, and torpedo craft. With 
such delaying forces based at important strategic 
points an enemy can be prevented from raiding 
the coast in the absence of the battle fleet or can 
be held in check until the fleet can reach the point 
attacked. 

From the strategic point of view the United 
States would be in a stronger military situation 
if the Philippine Islands were not a part of its 
outlying possessions. For they lie within the 
strategical control of Japan. Even Guam, in its 
present state of defenselessness, is a source of 
weakness. In case of a war in the Pacific, Ha- 
waii will therefore, if sufficiently garrisoned, form 
our most western position of safety. From this 
point, securely held, some claim that the United 
States might be able to fight to gain the domina- 
tion of the western Pacific. On the other hand, 
if Guam could be securely held, which is now 



1 64 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

unlikely, then that island would form our most 
western salient. All these strategical considera- 
tions are of interest to the nation, but it is this 
very "military road" and the consequent neces- 
sity of bases to protect the communications that 
most of our people do not appreciate. Alaska is 
not meteorologically possible on account of the 
prevailing fogs and strong currents. Yet Alaska 
is rich in mineral wealth and in fuel, and some 
day these dangers will be braved by a victorious 
fleet, in order to gain for its country the great 
resources of that territory which, even at this 
date, lie undeveloped. All these considerations 
show us how vital is the need for naval prepared- 
ness. Naval preparedness alone will keep united 
the colonial possessions which we are now so for- 
tunate as to own. 

Do not let us be led into the vain belief that 
disarmament and the establishment of an inter- 
national court of arbitral justice will arise after 
the great war in Europe is over. For the enforce- 
ment of the decrees of such a tribunal an inter- 
national police would have to be created. 1 This 
is an Utopian dream, long hoped for by mankind, 
but certainly not yet to be realized. Our peace 
advocates are "appalled by the great economic 

1 It would be well for us to recall here how, from 1820 to 1862, 
such a police was proposed by Great Britain for the suppression of 
the slave-trade on the west coast of Africa, and opposed by the 
United States. 



EMPLOYMENT OF THE FLEET 165 

waste of the war, the depletion of the treasuries 
of the warring nations, the loss of useful man- 
hood, the destruction of vast industries, and the 
desecration of those monuments of piety and 
learning for which the whole civilized world had 
reverence," but, unfortunately, such consequences 
are a part of man's evolution, and the human race 
must continue to suffer and to die for the benefit 
of future generations. We of this generation 
must suffer for the sake of those to follow, and 
each generation must accept its share of the 
world's sorrow and pain, giving its life-blood to 
cleanse the world's morality. 

Fleets and armies must be maintained, and 
maintained in efficiency, for they reflect the state 
of the nation that they represent. Otherwise we 
must acknowledge our moral inferiority and ac- 
cept pusillanimously our moral defeat as a nation. 



CHAPTER XI 
THE PERSONNEL 

MOST people believe that a navy consists 
solely of ships. In alarm the press cries 
for ships and more ships; but little or no 
attention is devoted to the provision of men. 

There is a wide-spread misconception through- 
out the country, and even in the councils of our 
service, that an effective navy depends only upon 
the building of an adequate number of ships, 
whereas the real secret of naval power lies in the 
steady, uniform training for war and in the pro- 
vision of men and ships in proper proportion to 
suit the ultimate plan of campaign. Public opin- 
ion clamors for results; yet that same public 
opinion refuses the funds necessary to bring about 
those results. Through our military strength only 
can we further the cause of peace. A strong na- 
tion prepared for war but willing to arbitrate 
would be a spectacle of which our peace advocates 
could well be proud, but a weak nation, as we are 
forced to consider ourselves, raising its puny voice 
for arbitration with a strong military power desir- 
ing a share of our holdings would be a spectacle 

166 



THE PERSONNEL 167 

too despicable to be heeded. Yet the character 
of our race is such that, unless danger stares us in 
the face, we are indisposed to lay out money as 
insurance of our own defense. 

When we consider the inadequacy of our pres- 
ent naval personnel to man properly the ships that 
we have, is it not time that we took an inventory 
and found out the true value of our naval estab- 
lishment? Three years are required to build a 
battleship, and somewhat less time for the smaller 
units, but after the vessel is completed nearly 
six months are necessary, after her crew has been 
received, before the creation can be considered 
available for action against a fully trained enemy. 

The recruit himself requires individual train- 
ing. He must be taught self-reliance, yet be im- 
pressed with the spirit of subordination and dis- 
cipline. He must learn to respect authority and 
accept responsibility. He must be educated in 
his own particular technical specialty. After this 
he must take his place in a great organization 
wherein there are thousands of other units. 
These units are formed into groups, and the groups 
again assembled into larger groups. Over each 
group is a subleader. The intricate organization 
of a battleship has been evolved through a process 
of selection that has required hundreds of years 
for its development. Its roots stretch back into 
the sailing days of Nelson, of Paul Jones, of Van 



168 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

Tromp, and even to the row-galleys of Marc 
Antony. Once the crew has been received on 
board a battleship, the slow process of evolution 
must begin. At first all is chaos. Then slowly 
order arises. The process is slow, necessitating 
much training and a vast amount of instruction. 
The ship's complex machinery must be studied. 
The officers and men must get to know each 
other, and respect and appreciate each other's 
responsibilities. Unless mutual trust is engen- 
dered throughout the entire ship, co-ordination 
cannot be achieved. The ship must be trained 
to shoot, to manoeuvre in company with other 
ships, to develop the full power of her machinery, 
to coal and take on stores with efficiency and des- 
patch, to signal quickly and accurately. Until all 
these details have been developed to a high state 
of efficiency, the ship is not a full military unit. 
With the navy's personnel short of officers and 
men, how can we expect, in the event of sudden 
war, to place our idle ships, now in ordinary or 
in reserve, in full commission and send them im- 
mediately to engage an enemy's fleet? Is it not 
murder to send out vessels as wofully unpre- 
pared as they will be ? The casualties on the sea 
in the present war give us an idea of what may 
happen to such ships if they encounter an efficient 
enemy. In the fight off Chile, two modern Brit- 
ish armored cruisers were sunk by the German 
squadron. Not a single member of their crews 



THE PERSONNEL 



169 



was saved. In the fight off the Falkland Islands, 
where the same German squadron was defeated 
by a stronger British squadron, from the crews of 
three ships carrying nearly 2,000 men only 90 
were saved. Does the nation desire to place its 
citizens in such jeopardy ? On land the casualties 
of battle are not so appalling, considering them on 
a percentage basis, for the defeated troops can 
either run away or surrender. An army, after 
defeat, is disorganized; each individual looks out 
for himself. But a sinking ship remains an or- 
ganization; every man follows the lead of the 
commander. And if the captain wills to go down 
with his ship his decision spells the doom of his 
entire crew. 

To demonstrate how inadequate our present 
personnel is to man the ships already built or 
building for the navy, the following table has been 
prepared : 





England 


Ger- 
many 


United 
States 


France 


Japan 


Line and Engine*,? Officers — 
Staff Officers— 

Medical 

Pay 


4,78i 

593- 
75o 
122 
147 


3,441 

340 

276 

162 

30 


1,898 

336 

231 

75 

24 


2,406 

390 

2ii 

187 




3,230 

364 

388 

135 




Naval Constructors 


Warrant Officers 


1,612 

2,740 
H9,597 

465 
21,414 


808 

3,183 
65,797 

177 
S,79i 


866 

867 

52,566 

34i 
9,915 


788 

147 
60,505 





887 

1,569 
50,050 







Marines — 
Officers 


Enlisted 





170 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

This table is illuminating. It reveals an alarm- 
ing shortage in the personnel of our navy. It 
shows that the vital need of the navy to-day is 
men, more men, and still more men. In his hear- 
ings before the committee on naval affairs of 
the House of Representatives, last December, 
the assistant secretary of the navy testified that 
an immediate increase of 18,000 enlisted men, as 
a minimum, was necessary to man properly the 
vessels already on the navy register. And the 
data above tabulated show us that we are not 
only short of enlisted men but also in need of offi- 
cers to lead them. 

The number of petty officers and enlisted men 
allowed by Congress by the Act of June 30, 19 14, 
(for the number is fixed by law, since our legis- 
lators are the final arbiters of all that the navy 
may have) is 51,500. Not one additional man 
may the navy enlist in excess of that number. 
Consequently, although there were, in the fiscal 
year 1913-14, over 88,900 applicants for enlist- 
ment in the service, but 18,948 could be accepted 
because only that number of men in that same 
period left the service at the expiration of their 
terms of enlistment, or for other reasons. So 
that, while the navy is to-day recruited up to the 
full strength allowed by law, it lacks, nevertheless, 
over 18,000 men of the full number (70,000) re- 
quired to properly man our ships. 



u^ 



THE PERSONNEL 171 

In officers, whose total number and number in 
each grade are also determined by Congress, we 
find a similar serious shortage. 1 Thus, for the 
present, Congress has determined that there shall 
be 18 rear-admirals, 70 captains, 112 commanders, 
200 lieutenant-commanders, 350 lieutenants, and 
over 350 lieutenants junior -grade and ensigns. 
Since Congress limits the number of officers in 
each grade, promotions from the lower grades can 
proceed only as fast as vacancies occur from re- 
tirements on account of age (sixty-two years), or 
from deaths, disablements, resignations, dismissals, 
or from other causes. Hence, there exists a situa- 
tion in which officers enter the service in the lower 
ranks from the Naval Academy at the rate of 
from 150 to 200 a year, while in the higher ranks 
only about 40 leave in each year from the causes 
above enumerated. The result is that there is 
an ever-increasing congestion in the lower grades. 
An officer remains an ensign or a lieutenant junior- 
grade so long that by the time he is promoted 
to command rank he is long past his prime and, 
therefore, not able to do justice to himself or to 
the service under the more exacting duties and 
graver responsibilities of the higher grades. 

1 Whereas in 1884 there were allowed the navy 1,114 officers (line 
and engineer) and 8,250 enlisted men, to-day there are authorized 
51,500 enlisted men, but only 1,898 officers. In other words, while 
the enlisted personnel in thirty years was increased 43,250, the num- 
ber of officers to-day is only 784 greater than in 1884. 



172 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

The personnel question is, then, most vital at 
the present moment. Until it has been attended 
to we shall not be able to say that we have a navy- 
ready for war. The training of the enlisted men 
cannot be accomplished in a few months ; it takes 
years to educate our officers in the professional 
subjects, and afterward several years more to 
give them the practical experience essential to 
supplement their technical knowledge; while in 
the highly trained warrant officers, those men who 
have won promotion from the ranks by ability 
and merit, the navy has a strength so great that 
they should be encouraged in every way possible. 

The duty of correcting this evil devolves upon 
our legislators. Such a remedy has been proposed 
by the personnel board, appointed by the secre- 
tary of the navy last July. Will Congress heed 
the warning cry? 1 

In addition to the regular enlisted personnel, 
there should exist also a trained naval reserve 
such as the great naval powers of Europe have 
had at their disposal to call upon in time of 
emergency. But we have no reserves. In time 
of war we would not even know beforehand the 
name, ability, or previous training of a single man 
who might volunteer. For the past six years the 
Navy Department has asked for legislation au- 
thorizing the establishment of a naval reserve of 
1 See the report of the personnel board, Appendix II. 



THE PERSONNEL 173 

officers and men, but Congress, until recently, 
turned a deaf ear. Our naval militia is too 
small in numbers and too limited in its train- 
ing to provide that numerous and trained body 
of men which will be needed at the outbreak of 
hostilities. In such a crisis the navy will need the 
services of the ex-enlisted men of the service, who, 
after four years on shipboard, have passed back 
into civil life. Undoubtedly many of these men 
would return to the navy in time of war, but Con- 
gress should anticipate the emergency and provide 
forthwith for their legal enrollment. 

In the administration of its personnel, then, as 
well as in the administration of its material, the 
navy needs a continuity of policy. This involves 
the training of both officers and men. And this 
means even more. For it concerns not only their 
education and their efficiency, but also their con- 
tentment, and their pride in a service that glories 
in the traditions of such men as John Paul Jones, 
John Barry, Edward Preble, Stephen Decatur, 
Oliver Hazard Perry, William Barker Cushing, 
and David Glasgow Farragut. 



CHAPTER XII 
EVOLUTION AND PROGRESS 

MAN, in the development of his mechanical 
achievements, unconsciously follows the 
law of evolution. He prefers to go step 
by step, feeling the way, instead of advancing by 
leaps and bounds into lands unexplored. The 
speed of evolution depends, therefore, upon the 
activity of the times or, in other words, upon the 
pressure of outside influences. 

In times of peace the evolution of war-ships has 
been slow. After each war their progress has 
accelerated. Each type reaches its fullest devel- 
opment before a revolution in type occurs. But 
such revolution in type is made necessary only by 
the discovery of new or improved methods of 
offense, or on account of a change of material of 
which the existing types are built. In the last 
half-dozen years the evolution of the battleship 
has been extremely rapid, but it has not, as yet, 
reached its height. At the present moment, the 
indications are that the future development will 
be rather toward a combination of superior speed 
and gun power than toward armor protection. 

174 



EVOLUTION AND PROGRESS 175 

The vessels with the torpedo as the sole weapon 
of offense, however, have periodically shaken 
men's convictions in first-line ships. To-day the 
submarine again rivets the world's attention. 

The theme of the small vessel, protected from 
gun-fire by the natural armor of the ocean, has 
been the central thought in many flights of the 
imagination. What may be termed the torpedo 
peril, is not, however, a new acquaintance. We 
have met it frequently before ; first in the days of 
Fulton, then in our Civil War when the spar tor- 
pedo was designed, and still later when the auto- 
mobile torpedo surprised the world and gave food 
to man's imagination. The advent of the automo- 
bile torpedo threatened the battleship's supremacy 
as the queen of the seas; yet the battleship did 
not disappear. It held its own, emerging greater 
and more powerful. It will be remembered that 
France, under the spell of this marvellous weapon, 
feverishly built torpedo craft for a number of years 
and neglected her battleship fleet. Like all such 
radical movements, conceived under the impulse 
of hysteria, the pendulum swung too far. France, 
believing that her logical enemy was England or 
Germany, thought that with countless torpedo 
craft she could sweep the seas. But it was soon 
shown by less impulsive thinkers that the mastery 
of the sea was impossible without those great ves- 
sels armed with large-caliber turret guns, and 



176 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

France was obliged to again take up her interrupted 
battleship-construction programme. 

This year the torpedo peril is again with us — 
this time cloaked in the submarine. These ves- 
sels are equipped with Diesel Heavy Oil engines 
for surface-cruising and electric motor for sub- 
merged work, and carry torpedoes with heavy 
explosive charges. These two advances in en- 
gineering progress have made the submarine more 
reliable than heretofore, and have demonstrated 
its usefulness as an arm of the fleet, but not as a 
substitute for the fleet itself. 1 

With the offensive submarine now a certainty, 
should we continue to build battleships? The 
new cruising submarine, if a success, may become 
a serious menace to a battleship fleet, but it does 
not seem a sufficient menace to stop the construc- 
tion of those ships which have so long, and in 
the face of all challengers, held command of the 
sea. 

The ultimate aim of war is to command the sea. 
It is as certain now as always that this command 
will go to the nation with the most mobile and 
powerful fleets of all types, each to be used in its 

1 For in the torpedo-boat destroyer there has been developed a 
defense against the submarine whose value is more pronounced since 
it is equally effective against the enemy's destroyer and submarine. 
In this respect, the facility with which the British destroyers have 
been able to evade submarine attack, and in some cases sink the 
submarines themselves by ramming and gun-fire, has been one of 
the unexpected developments of the present war. 



EVOLUTION AND PROGRESS 177 

proper sphere of action. The submarine and the 
destroyer, armed with long-range torpedoes, are a 
natural menace to the advancing enemy. But 
they can be met by changes of construction in the 
battleship and by the provision of a sufficient 
number of similar types in our own fleet. 

In these days of marvellous mechanical and 
electrical devices, men's imaginations are apt to 
soar to illimitable heights. But a vessel designed 
to dive below the surface of the sea is not one 
upon which to place too much reliance. As long 
as the nations of the earth are separated by great 
expanses of ocean there will be a vital necessity 
for a strong fleet of capital ships. The capital 
ship may change her shape and the material and 
methods of her construction. The grand old 
wooden Victory, Nelson's line-of-battle ship, and 
the present dreadnaught, New York, may bear 
little resemblance, yet each, as the distinctive 
type of her day, stood for the command of the 
sea. The future mistress of the ocean will, like- 
wise, be a vessel in which there can be placed the 
most absolute confidence. . She must, therefore, 
be a thoroughly trustworthy type, capable of 
keeping the sea in all weathers. She must be 
habitable for a large crew and be armed with the 
most powerful weapons. She must be able to 
take the offensive and defensive against any pos- 
sible opponent. She must be swift, active, and 



178 OUR NAVY AND THE NEXT WAR 

dependable, and must be able, with the aid of her 
auxiliaries, to control the entire area through 
which she will have to operate. 

Nelson said that his ships of the line were the 
best diplomats in Europe, and the history of Eng- 
land proved the truth of that saying. With our 
own peace assured, we can labor successfully for 
the peace of the world. But with the will to do 
this, we should remember that we must have 
also the power to enforce it. Our proclamation 
of world policies has imposed upon us great obli- 
gations, national obligations, of making secure 
our influence near our own shores and in the 
eastern Pacific. For this purpose we have but 
one main defense — our navy, if it is adequate, ef- 
ficient, and well administered. 



APPENDIX I 

THE REPORT OF THE GENERAL BOARD 

Department of the Navy, 

General Board, 
Washington, November 17, 1914. 

To: Secretary of the Navy. 

Subject: Increase of the Navy; building program and 
personnel, 1916. 

Reference: Department's indorsement 8557-146 : 11, 
September 22, 1914. 

Article 167, paragraph 3, United States Navy Regula- 
tions, 1 9 13, reads a follows: 

"It (the General Board) shall consider the number and 
types of ships proper to constitute the fleet, the number 
and rank of officers, and the number and rating of enlisted 
men required to man them, and shall advise the Secretary 
of the Navy respecting the estimates therefor (including 
such increase as may be requisite) to be submitted an- 
nually to Congress." 

The General Board in compliance with duties thus im- 
posed upon it by this and similar paragraphs in preceding 
regulations has from year to year recommended to the 
department a building program and personnel legislation 
that would, in its opinion, produce a fleet that would be 
adequate to the needs of the Nation. 

179 



i8o APPENDIX I 

2. In view of conditions now existing the General Board 
has given particularly careful thought to its recommenda- 
tions for the coming fiscal year. To make its position 
clear and place before the department the full meaning 
of its recommendations, the General Board considers it 
necessary to review at length all that has preceded these 
recommendations and led up to them. 

Consistent Policy of General Board Since 1903 

3. In its letter No. 420-2, of October 17, 1903, the 
General Board, after mature consideration of our national 
policies and interests, and of those of the other leading 
naval nations of the world, expressed its opinion of what 
the ultimate strength of the United States Navy should 
be, and recommended a program for the completion of 
the Navy to the strength then believed adequate by 
1919. 

4. The basis of the fleet recommended was 48 battle- 
ships; and lesser units and auxiliaries were recommended 
in the proportions believed to be best to complete a fighting 
fleet, in the light of the best information obtainable at 
that time. The influence of the progress made by new 
inventions and the discovery of new ideas in the develop- 
ment of the lesser units have changed the proportions and 
character of some of these lesser units; and have, to that 
extent, modified the original recommendations of the 
General Board. But the fundamental fact that the power 
of a fleet is to be measured by the number and efficiency 
of its heavy fighting units, or battleships, has remained 
unchanged. The recommendations of the General Board 
heretofore submitted have consistently followed a policy 
looking to the creation of a fleet founded on a battleship 
strength of 48, in accordance with its recommendation 



APPENDIX I 181 

made in 1903, of what it considered an adequate fleet to 
meet the naval needs of the Nation and be an adequate 
insurance against aggression. 

5. The General Board believes that these recommen- 
dations made from year to year have been both misun- 
derstood and misconstrued in some quarters. An im- 
pression prevails that the General Board has always 
recommended an annual continuing building program of 
four battleships, with accompanying lesser units and auxil- 
iaries. A brief analysis of the recommendations made 
by the General Board, beginning with the original formu- 
lation of its policy in 1903, to the present time, will demon- 
strate the error of this impression, and show that the 
recommendations made were consistent and contem- 
plated the creation of a battleship fleet of 48 vessels by 
1919, but did not involve a constant and fixed program of 
building four battleships a year. 

Battleships 

6. In October, 1903, the Navy had 10 battleships com- 
pleted and 14 more either under construction or author- 
ized. The last of these 14 was to be completed by 1907. 
In view of this condition, and to complete a fleet of 48 
battleships by 1919, the General Board in paragraph 8 
of its letter of October 17, 1903, recommended: 

"8. To sum up, the General Board recommends that 
Congress be requested to authorize for the present a 
yearly building program, not limited by the amount ap- 
propriated last year, composed of the following ships: 
Two battleships, etc." 

To this letter was appended a table, quoted below, 
showing what the condition of the Navy would be in bat- 
tleships, year by year, to 1919, starting with the 10 com- 



182 



APPENDIX I 



pleted and 14 already building or authorized, if the recom- 
mendation of the General Board for a two-battleship per 
year program from 1904 were followed. 



YEAR 


BATTLESHIPS 


YEAR 


BATTLESHIPS 


Com- 
pleted 


Author- 
ized 


Com- 
pleted 


Author- 
ized 


1903 


10 
12 
17 
19 
24 
26 
28 
30 
32 


14 
2 
2 
2 
2 
2 
2 
2 
2 


1912 


34 
36 
38 
40 
42 
44 
46 
48 


2 
2 
2 
2 






1905 


1914 


1906 


T915 






1908 






I918 


I9IO 




I9II 







7. It will be seen from the foregoing table that the 
General Board's recommendation provided for a two- 
battleship program consistently pursued from 1904 to 191 5 
to provide a fleet of 48 battleships by 19 19. In these 
recommendations replacements were not considered, nor 
had limits of age been placed on battleships. The funda- 
mental idea, however, was a two-battleship program to 
provide a fleet of 48 battleships by 1 919. A larger pro- 
gram to hasten the completion of the fleet had been con- 
sidered, but had been rejected because it was believed a 
fleet of 48 battleships by 19 19 would answer all needs, 
in view of the known building programs of other coun- 
tries. 

8. In pursuance of this policy the General Board, as 
stated above, began its yearly recommendations by ask- 
ing that two battleships be authorized in 1904. The fol- 
lowing table shows the yearly programs recommended. 
The reasons for an increase over two battleships annually 
are given in succeeding paragraphs. 



APPENDIX I 



183 



YEAR 


BATTLESHIPS 


YEAR 


BATTLESHIPS 


Recom- 
mended 

by 
General 
Board 


Author- 
ized by 
Congress 


Recom- 
mended 

by 
General 
Board 


Author- 
ized by 
Congress 


I904 


2 
3 
3 
2 

4 


1 
2 

I 
I 
2 


1909. . , 


4 
4 
4 
4 
4 


2 
2 
2 

I 
I 


1905 


I9IO 


I906 

1907 


I9II 


I912 


1908 


I913 







9. The recommendation for the laying down of two 
ships in 1904 failed of enactment, and only one was pro- 
vided for, leaving the program for the creation of a 48- 
battleship fleet by 1919 one ship in arrears. To make 
this deficiency good, and maintain the general program, 
one additional ship, or three in all, were recommended for 
the 1905 program. Two were authorized, still leaving a 
deficiency of one for the two years, 1904 and 1905. To 
provide for this three were again recommended for the 
1906 program. In 1906 and again in 1907 one ship only 
was authorized, leaving by 1908 the general program three 
ships in arrears. To begin making this deficiency good 
the General Board for the 1908 program recommended 
the authorization of four ships. From 1908 to 191 1, in- 
clusive, Congress followed the original program and pro- 
vided for two battleships yearly. The accumulated 
shortage of three ships still remained, however, during 
these four years, and the Geiferal Board recommended 
year by year the laying down of four ships to begin mak- 
ing this good, since each succeeding year found the short- 
age still there. 

10. In 1910 a new element entered, not considered in 
the original program. The fleet of 48 battleships con- 
templated in the program put forward in 1903, on a two- 



1 84 APPENDIX I 

battleship per year building program, to be ready by 1919, 
contained all battleships then borne on the list, beginning 
with the Indiana. Experience had not yet in 1903 
demonstrated the effective life of battleships, nor had 
any exhaustive study been made of it. Beginning with 
the program recommended for 191 1 in General Board's 
letter No. 420-2 of May 24, 1910, this matter was se- 
riously taken into consideration, since experience had 
shown that the three older battleships, the Indiana, 
Massachusetts and Oregon, then 20 years old from date 
of authorization, were approaching the limit of their 
effective life. Further studies from our own experience 
and from that of other navies, and from practice abroad 
convinced the General Board that the effective life of bat- 
tleships is about 20 years from time of completion; and 
that hence, to maintain a fleet at a given strength, it is 
necessary to lay down a replacement ship 20 years from 
the time of the laying down of the original ship. Hence, 
replacement ships for the Indiana, Oregon and Massa- 
chusetts should have been laid down in 19 10, for the Iowa 
in 191 2, and new replacement ships should be begun for 
the Kentucky and Kearsarge in 191 5. These matters, 
together with the shortage of three battleships already 
existing in 191 1, were taken into consideration by the 
General Board in making its recommendations for a 
four-battleship program in both 1912 and 1913. One 
battleship only was authorized in each of these two years, 
increasing the shortage in the original program to five, 
without considering replacement ships for the Indiana, 
Oregon, Massachusetts and Iowa, already overdue for 
authorization. 

n. The preceding analysis shows clearly the error in 
the prevailing impression that the General Board has 
heretofore advocated a navy based on a continuous build- 



APPENDIX I 185 

ing program of four battleships a year, and proves that 
up to the present it has advocated continuously and con- 
sistently a program to produce a fleet of 48 battleships by 
1919. This would have called for, considering replace- 
ments, a general two-battleship program with a third 
added every three years. The number of battleships 
called for by this policy, 48, and the date set for their 
completion, by 19 19, were fixed by a calm and logical 
review of the policies and aims of the Nation and the 
known laws and prospective developments and aims of 
other countries; and the policy was to provide and main- 
tain at all times a fleet equal to or superior to that of any 
nation likely to challenge our policies. 

12. The 1903 program given in paragraph 6 of this let- 
ter, as modified by the replacement policy in 19 10, called 
for at this date, November, 1914: 

(a) Effective battleships completed and ready for service, less 

than 20 years old from completion 38 

(&) Battleships under construction 7 

(c) Battleships authorized in 1914 2 

Total ~47 

13. The actual situation of the fleet as relates to battle- 
ships at this date, November, 1914, is as follows: 

(a) Effective battleships completed and ready for service, less 

than 20 years old from completion (since the sale of the 

Mississippi and Idaho) ]. . . 30 

(b) Battleships under construction. .• 4 

(c) Battleships authorized in 1914 2 

(d) To replace Mississippi and Idaho 1 

Total ~~z7 

14. This shows that we are now deficient 10 battleships, 
built, building, and authorized, from that contemplated 
in the 1903 program. 



1 86 APPENDIX I 

15. The General Board has made the foregoing brief 
analysis to set forth clearly the reasons for and meaning of 
all the recommendations it has made for battleship con- 
struction up to this time; and to show the conception 
under which the General Board has acted in the perform- 
ance of its duty, under the Regulations, as the responsible 
advisers of the Secretary in all matters relating to the 
strength of the fleet, and the number and character of the 
units composing it. In the matter of battleships, the final 
result of all recommendations, and of all action taken 
thereon up to this date, has been to produce a completed 
battle line of 8 units less than the General Board believed 
to be safe, and with 2 units less under construction and 
authorized than was needed to continue the expansion 
of the fleet to the strength laid down in the policy. 

16. The General Board believes the policy it has con- 
sistently advocated for the production of an adequate 
Navy is to the best interests of the country, and that 
any Navy less than adequate is an expense to the Nation 
without being a protection. It cannot, therefore, too 
strongly urge the adoption by the Government of a policy 
looking to the making good of the deficiencies of the past, 
and the building up of this arm of the national defense 
until it becomes equal to the task that war will put upon 
it. That point will not be reached until the Navy is 
strong enough to meet on equal terms the strongest prob- 
able adversary. 

17. The wisdom of such a policy is well illustrated by 
recent events, and is reinforced by the teachings of all 
history. For a review of the history of all ages will show 
that no nation has ever created and maintained a great 
over-sea commerce without the support of sea power. 
It will further show that trade rivalry, which is the active 
expression of the most universal of all human traits — 



APPENDIX I 187 

desire for gain — has been a most fruitful cause of war; 
and, when the clash has come, the commerce of the 
weaker sea power has been broken up and driven from 
the seas. That has been true for all time, and is true 
to-day; and has a particular bearing on the United States 
at the present time, when such strenuous efforts are being 
made to build up a national merchant marine and extend 
our foreign commerce. 

18. In the matter of national defense, history teaches 
still another great lesson particularly applicable to our- 
selves. That is, that a nation, insular in character or 
separated by bodies of water from other nations can and 
must rely on its Navy — when that Navy is adequate — 
for protection and freedom from invasion and may keep 
its own soil free from all wars other than civil. The 
United States is one among the few nations of the world 
that occupy this happy position, being insular in so far 
as any nation, capable of making serious war upon us is 
concerned, since any opponent that need be considered 
must come to us from across the seas. Our main defense 
and protection from invasion must, therefore, always 
rest with the Navy, which must ever remain our first and 
best line of defense. This defense, unless adequate, is 
impotent; and, as before stated, adequacy is not reached 
until the Navy is strong enough to meet on equal terms 
the Navy of the strongest probable adversary. 

19. In the matter of battleships the General Board re- 
mains of the opinion that it has always held, that com- 
mand of the sea can only be gained and held by vessels 
that can take and keep the sea in all times and in all 
weathers and overcome the strongest enemy vessels that 
may be brought against them. Other types are valuable 
and have their particular uses, all of which are indispensa- 
ble, but limited in character. But, what has been true 



1 88 APPENDIX I 

throughout all naval wars of the past, and what is equally 
true to-day, is that the backbone of any navy that can 
command the sea consists of the strongest sea-going, sea- 
keeping ships of its day, or, of its battleships. The Gen- 
eral Board recommends, therefore, in the light of all the 
information it has up to this present date that the devel- 
opment of the battleship fleet be continued as the primary 
aim in naval development, and that four (4) of them be 
authorized in the 19 16 program. 

Destroyers 

20. For the general purposes of war on the sea the Gen- 
eral Board has placed the destroyer as the type of warship 
next in importance to the battleship, and has based the 
programs it has recommended on that idea. After very 
mature consideration of all the elements involved, and a 
study of the results obtained from fleet maneuvers, the 
General Board came to the conclusion that a well-balanced 
fighting fleet, for all the purposes of offense and defense, 
called for a relative proportion of four destroyers to one 
battleship. Hence, for every battleship built four de- 
stroyers should be provided. The General Board still 
holds this opinion and, therefore, recommends that six- 
teen (16) destroyers be provided in the 19 16 program. 

Fleet Submarines 

21. For several years past all leading navies have been 
striving to perfect a submarine of an enlarged type with 
habitability, radius and speed sufficient to enable it to 
accompany the fleet and act with it tactically, both in 
offense and defense. Our designers and builders have 
been devoting their efforts to the same end and are now 
ready to guarantee such a type and one such vessel was 



APPENDIX I 189 

provided for in the appropriation act of 1914. The great 
difficulty in the past in the production of this type has 
been the lack of a reliable internal combustion engine of 
the requisite power to give the necessary speed. This 
difficulty has been overcome, and the General Board is 
assured that engines have been designed and fully tested 
that will meet the requirements; and the builders stand 
ready to guarantee the results. The value of such a type 
in war for distant work with the fleet can hardly be over- 
estimated, and the General Board recommends that three 
(3) be provided in the 19 16 program. These with the 
one already authorized, will form a fleet submarine divi- 
sion of four for work with the fleet and be the beginning 
of a powerful arm of the fleet. 

Coast Submarines 

22. For the submarine for coast defense and for occa- 
sional acting with the fleet in home waters, the General 
Board sees no necessity for boats of as great speed and 
size as the later designs, made before the sea-going sub- 
marine was believed to be in sight. In fact, any increase 
of size is detrimental, in that it increases draft and debars 
them from shallow waters; and any increase of speed in 
this class of submarines is not needed, and is gained at 
the expense of other desirable qualities. Between the 
coast-defense submarine and the submarine of sufficient 
size, radius, habitability and .surface speed to accompany 
and act with the fleet tactically, the General Board sees 
no necessity in naval warfare for an intermediate type. 
It is therefore recommended that the submarines for the 
coast work be of the general characteristics already pre- 
scribed in General Board letter No. 420-15, of June 10, 
1914, and that sixteen (16) of these be provided for in the 
1916 program. 



190 APPENDIX I 



Scout Cruisers 

23. Il the struggle to build up the purely distinctive 
fighting ships of the Navy — battleships, destroyers and 
subiiarines — the cruising and scouting element of the fleet 
haj been neglected in recent years, and no cruisers or 
Jcouts have been provided for since 1904, when the Mon- 
tana, North Carolina, Birmingham, Chester and Salem were 
authorized. This leaves the fleet peculiarly lacking in 
this element so necessary for information in a naval cam- 
paign, and of such great value in clearing the sea of tor- 
pedo and mining craft, in opening and protecting routes 
of trade for our own commerce, and in closing and pro- 
hibiting such routes to the commerce of the enemy. The 
General Board believes that this branch of the fleet has 
been too long neglected and recommends that the con- 
struction of this important and necessary type be resumed. 
For the 19 16 program it is recommended that four (4) 
scout cruisers be provided. 

Air Craft 

24. The General Board in its endorsement No. 449 of 
August 30, 1913, and accompanying memorandum brought 
to the attention of the department the dangerous situa- 
tion of the country in the lack of air craft and air men in 
both the naval and military services. A resume was given 
in that endorsement with the accompanying memorandum 
of conditions in the leading countries abroad at that date, 
showing the preparations being made for air warfare and 
the use of air craft by both armies and navies, and con- 
trasting their activity with our own inactivity. Certain 
recommendations were made in the same endorsement 
looking to the beginning of the establishment of a proper 
air service for the Navy. 



APPENDIX I 191 

25 The total result of that effort was the appointment 
of a board on aeronautics October 9, 1913. That board 
made further recommendations, among them the estab- 
lishment of an aeronautic school and station at Pensacola 
and the purchase of 50 aeroplanes, 1 fleet dirigible and 
2 small dirigibles for training. At the present time, more 
than a year later, the total number of air craft of any 
kind owned by the Navy consists of 12 aeroplanes, not 
more than two of which are of the same type, and all re- 
ported to have too little speed and carrying capacity for 
service work. 

26. In view of the advance that has been made in aero- 
nautics during the past year, and the demonstration now 
being made of the vital importance of a proper air service 
to both land and sea warfare, our present situation can be 
described as nothing less than deplorable. As now devel- 
oped air craft are the eyes of both armies and navies, and it 
is difficult to place any limit to their offensive possibilities. 

27. In our present condition of unpreparedness, in 
contact with any foe possessing a proper air service, our 
scouting would be blind. We would be without the means 
of detecting the presence of submarines or mine fields or 
of attempting direct attack on the enemy from the air, 
while our own movements would be an open book to him. 
The General Board can not too strongly urge"; that] the 
department's most serious thought be given to this matter, 
and that immediate steps be taken to remedy it, and recom- 
mends that Congress be asked for an appropriation of at 
least $5,000,000, to be made available immediately, for 
the purpose of establishing an efficient air service. 

Gunboats 

28. The Navy is very deficient in gunboats. Though 
the Navy list gives 30 names under "gunboats," only a 



192 APPENDIX I 

very limited number of these 30 are in a condition to be 
available for general service. Some, like the Villalobos, 
Callao, Samar, Sandoval, etc., are old boats of little value 
taken over from Spain, of from 400 to 250 tons and less. 
Of the others, with the exception of the light-draft river 
gunboats Monocacy and Palos, and the Sacramento, no 
gunboats have been authorized since 1902. Seven are at 
present assigned to Naval Militia duty, and three others 
have been recently withdrawn from that service because 
of the crying need for more gunboats for general duty. 
Those remaining on the list serviceable and fit for general 
duty are so limited in number that it has been necessary 
in recent years to detail battleships, large cruisers and 
destroyers to do gunboat duty. This has been markedly 
demonstrated during the past year on the Mexican coast. 
It would seem superfluous to point out the harmful in- 
fluence this has on the efficiency and training of the fleet 
for war and the General Board advises strongly against 
such practice whenever it can be possibly avoided. It is 
therefore recommended that a beginning be made to re- 
place the old and worn-out gunboats, that there may be 
sufficient of them to do the police and general diplomatic 
duties required of such vessels in time of peace without 
disrupting the battle fleet. To this end it is recommended 
that four (4) be authorized in the 19 16 program. With 
the exception of the Sacramento, authorized in 191 1, no 
seagoing gunboat has been authorized since 1902. 

Auxiliaries 

FUEL SHIPS 

29. In the matter of auxiliaries needed for the fleet the 
General Board is of the opinion that the most serious 
situation exists in the matter of fuel-oil supply, and that 



APPENDIX I 193 

provision for oil-fuel ships should be given first considera- 
tion. This is serious from the point of view of economy 
in time of peace, and would be disastrous in the event 
of hostilities arising. We have 41 oil-burning destroyers 
built or building, to be followed by others, 8 ships of the 
dreadnaught type using oil as an auxiliary fuel, and in 
19 1 5 the two first all-oil-fuel battleships will be added to 
the fleet, to be followed by others. To supply this oil- 
burning fleet with fuel the Navy possesses the Arethusa, 
an old tank ship of 3,629 tons capacity and not more than 
10 knots speed, and seven fleet colliers fitted to carry 
some fuel oil in addition. The total oil capacity is 23,728 
tons, 3,629 tons of which — that in the Arethusa — could 
not accompany the fleet; so that the present available 
oil supply that could accompany the fleet is 20,109 tons. 
Logistic studies show that to maintain our present oil- 
burning fleet in active service across the ocean requires 
the delivery of about 23,000 tons of fuel oil per month. 
To maintain this supply we have the seven colliers men- 
tioned above capable of delivering an average of about 
10,000 tons per month. This situation will be very much 
aggravated on the addition to the fleet of the two all- 
oil-burning battleships, Oklahoma and Nevada, and the 
other destroyers now under construction. Nor can com- 
mercial oil carriers be relied upon to remedy this deficiency, 
since ocean tankage both at home and abroad is not yet 
adequate to meet the demands ©f commerce and industry. 

30. To partially meet this situation two oil-fuel ships 
of a combined cargo capacity of 15,108 tons were author- 
ized in August, 1912. On November 1, 1914, one of these 
ships was only 82.4 per cent completed and the other 
only 57.2 per cent completed. 

31. To remedy this serious defect in our preparedness 
for war the General Board recommended the construction 



ic 4 APPENDIX I 

of :~o (2) oil-fuel ships in the 191 5 program. These were 
not authorized and the General Board therefore emphatic- 
ally repeats this recommendation for the 1916 program, 
and further recommends that the construction of the two 
ships authorized in August, 191 2, more than two years 
ago, be hastened with all possible speed. 

DBSES0XEB DBOKBS AND SUBMARINE TENDERS 

52. The auxiliaries of next importance to the fleet at 
the present time, after the oil-fuel ships, are destrrye: 
tenders and submarine tenders. Of the three improvised 
■ :ssels used as destroyer :e~ie:s the Iris, built in 1885, 
is past her period of usefulness and should be replaced. 
The General Board recommended one (1) destroyer tender 
in the 191 5 program. This was not authorized, and the 
recommendation is repeated for the 191 6 program. 

33. 01 the six vessels used as submarine tenders 
are of the improvised variety, and none is well fitted for 
Hie service. Three of them are old monitors, two of them 
old gunboats, and one the old sailing ship Severn. To 
begin replacir z these, one submarine tender was author- 
ized in 191 1, another in 191 2, and one (1) was recom- 
mended in 1913 for the 1915 program. This last was not 
authorized, and this recommendation is repealed for the 
1916 program. 

TRANSPORTS 

34. The General Board has from time to time, in nu- 
merous ^e::e:s e~:ending over a series of years, called the 
attention of the department to the inadequacy of prepa- 
ration in die Navy far advanced base work and to the 
vital importance of this work to success in war. The 
prexeqoisitE for any advanced base work is the necesr 



APPENDIX I 195 



±e :: - znz: 
—the Hamcc 

size :: i= z :: 
:: ::zf:r_::: 

: _t5 :: - 

:::::: ~ i:t: 



:_t : ;:: zrrrizz.. 

e: 5?:r.-_i 






7-> 



196 APPENDIX I 

gram. This was not authorized, and the General Board 
repeats this recommendation for the 1916 program. 

SUPPLY SHIPS 

37. Of the four ships borne on the Navy list as supply 
ships, all are improvised and were hurriedly bought and 
fitted in 1898 to meet the exigencies of the Spanish War. 
The Supply is already beyond her period of usefulness, 
and has been discarded as a supply ship. The Culgoa is 
approaching her limit of usefulness. The Celtic and 
Glacier, while old and inadequately fitted, are still good 
for some years service. One new ship was authorized in 
1913. Another is needed, and to meet this situation the 
General Board recommended the construction of one (1) 
supply ship in the 191 5 program. This was not authorized 
and the General Board repeats this recommendation for 
the 19 16 program. 

Summary 

38. To summarize, the General Board recommends for 
the 1 91 6 program — 

4 battleships. 
16 destroyers. 

3 fleet submarines. 
16 coast submarines. 

4 scouts. 

4 gunboats. 
2 oil-fuel ships. 
1 destroyer tender. 
1 submarine tender. 
1 Navy transport. 
1 hospital ship. 
1 supply ship. 
Air service — $5,000,000. 



APPENDIX I 197 



Personnel 

39. The General Board can not too strongly urge upon 
the department the necessity of using its best endeavors 
to carry out the repeated recommendations of the Gen- 
eral Board, made from year to year, to provide the fleet 
with a personnel, active list and trained reserve, equal to 
the manning of the fleet for war. 

40. In the opinion of the General Board this is a matter 
of even more serious import than that of construction, 
for it can not be too often repeated that ships without a 
trained personnel to man and fight them are useless for 
the purposes of war. The training needed for the pur- 
pose is long and arduous, and can not be done after the 
outbreak of war. This must have been provided for long 
previous to the beginning of hostilities; and any ship of 
the fleet found at the outbreak of war without provision 
having been made for its manning by officers and men 
trained for service can be counted as only a useless mass 
of steel whose existence leads only to a false sense of 
security. 

41. The strength of fleets is measured too often in the 
public mind by the number and tonnage of its material 
units. The real strength of a fleet is a combination of its 
personnel — with their skill and training — and its material; 
and of these two elements the more important — the per- 
sonnel — is too often forgotten and neglected in making 
provision for our fleet. The General Board can not im- 
press this point too strongly on the department or recom- 
mend too earnestly that every effort be made to correct 
it, and that legislation be urged to provide for a personnel 
on the active list, supplemented by a trained reserve, 
sufficient to man every vessel of the fleet when the call 
comes. 



198 APPENDIX I 

42. No nation in time of peace keeps all the snips of its 
Navy fully manned and in full commission. But all 
leading nations except ourselves provide an active list, 
officers and men, sufficient to keep the best of their fleet 
in full commission and all the serviceable ships of their 
fleet in a material condition for war; and in addition a 
trained reserve of officers and men sufficient to complete the 
complements and fully man every serviceable ship of 
their navies, and furnish a reserve for casualties. Thus, 
every nation with which conflict is possible is prepared 
to mobilize its entire navy, by order, with officers and men 
trained for the service. We alone of the naval powers 
provide no such reserves, and an active personnel too 
scant, and trust to the filling of the complements of our 
ships by untrained men recruited after war is imminent or 
declared. To quickly man all of the ships of the Navy 
serviceable for war (including ships which are now in 
reserve or ordinary) with trained crews is impossible 
owing to the absence of a trained reserve. 

43. In view of all that has been herein set forth, the 
General Board recommends: 

(a) That legislation be asked for providing an active 
personnel, officers and enlisted force, capable of keeping 
in full commission all battleships under 15 years of age 
from date of authorization, all destroyers and submarines 
under 12 years of age from authorization, half of the 
cruisers and all gunboats, and all the necessary auxiliaries 
that go with the active fleet; and of furnishing nucleus 
crews for all ships in the Navy that would be used in time 
of war, and the necessary men for the training and other 
shore stations. 

(b) That the general policy be adopted of expanding 
the active personnel with the expansion of the fleet in the 
proportions indicated in (a). 



APPENDIX I 199 

(c) That immediate steps be taken to form a national 
naval reserve of trained officers and men, and that this 
work be pushed until this reserve in connection with the 
Naval Militia has reached the point where, combined with 
the active list, it will be possible to fully man the entire 
fleet with war complements and furnish 10 per cent ad- 
ditional for casualties. 

(d) That the Naval Militia be expanded in number and 
that the department encourage the continuance and im- 
provement of its training to the end that it may still 
more efficiently serve to re-inforce the regular service at 
need. 

George Dewey. 



APPENDIX II 

THE REPORT OF BOARD ON INCREASED EFFI- 
CIENCY OF THE PERSONNEL OF THE NAVY 

Department of the Navy, 

Washington, January 23, 1915. 

From: The Personnel Board. 

To: The Secretary of the Navy. 

Subject: Report of the board. 

1. The Board on Increased Efficiency of the Personnel 
of the Navy submits herewith the draft of a bill to pro- 
vide for proper distribution of officers of the Navy in the 
various grades in accordance with the needs of the ser- 
vice; to insure a uniform flow of promotion; and to give 
all officers equal opportunity for advancement. 

2. The bill abolishes the so-called plucking board. In 
lieu thereof it establishes the principle of promotion by 
competitive methods and the selection of the most effi- 
cient, together with the creation of an active reserve list 
for those officers not chosen for promotion. Officers 
placed on this reserve list will continue to render active 
service but will not be promoted except for special meri- 
torious services. 

3. The competitive method of promotion recognizes 
three factors: First, professional knowledge; second, the 
official record of past performances; and, third, service 



APPENDIX II 201 

opinion obtained from the recommendations of officers 
senior in the service. 

4. The paramount problem in all matters relating to 
personnel is that of fairly disposing of the unavoidable 
surplus of officers from the lower grades as they pass to 
and through the upper grades. As to the existence of 
this surplus, it is sufficient to refer to the fact that the 
complement of a battleship contains one captain and 
from 10 to 15 ensigns. The experience of our Navy has 
shown that out of 150 ensigns fresh from the Naval Acad- 
emy there will be at the end of 34 years but 5 needed for 
the grade of rear admiral. The experience of other nations 
is in substantial agreement. Death and disability will 
not sufficiently reduce the original numbers; artificial 
means must therefore be resorted to. 

5. Under the system we propose a midshipman on 
entering the Naval Academy becomes a member of a 
class varying in number from 250 to 300. After four 
years' work, with the consequent elimination of the least 
fit, about 150 should be taken into the service as ensigns 
at an average age of about 22. After three years' ser- 
vice as ensign a competitive examination will be held, 
establishing their order of merit. Of the original 150, 
then reduced by natural causes to about 135, 100 will be 
continued in the line of the Navy and approximately 25 
others in the Pay, Construction, Civil Engineer, and 
Marine Corps. The remaining* ensigns, approximately 
10 yearly — those at the bottom — will be honorably dis- 
charged with one year's pay, as was the case for many 
years in the past with surplus midshipmen. 

6. The 100 ensigns remaining in the line will be com- 
missioned lieutenants (junior grade). At the end of six 
years those remaining will be promoted to the grade of 
lieutenant subject to the usual examinations. They will 



202 APPENDIX II 

remain in the grade of lieutenant for a similar period of 
six years, those remaining will become candidates for 
promotion. At this point will begin the process of pro- 
motion by selection and the transfer to the active reserve 
list of those not promoted. Normally two out of every 
three lieutenants will be promoted to the grade of lieu- 
tenant commander, and the length of service in this grade 
is also six years. At the end of that period those remain- 
ing will become candidates for promotion to the grade of 
commander. About one-half will be promoted and the 
other half transferred to the active reserve list. Those 
promoted will serve as commanders for six years. About 
one-half will then be promoted in the same manner to the 
grade of captain. Seven years is the period of service 
prescribed for captain, and the class originally composed 
of 150 ensigns will, on arriving at the top of the list of 
captains at the end of 34 years' service, be reduced to 
approximately 10 on the active list. Of this number 5 
will go up to the grade of rear admiral and the remainder 
will be placed on the active reserve list. 

7. The foregoing outline applies to the normal course 
after the proposed system is in full operation. Existing 
"humps" in the personnel of the sendee will take a number 
of years to smooth out, but it is believed that the process 
laid down will be carried on with the greatest possible 
fairness to the officers affected. For a number of years 
to come the transfers to the active reserve list will be less 
numerous than when the bill is in full operation, especially 
transfers from the lower grades. 

8. The same general principles applied to the line of 
the Navy have been applied to the various staff corps. 

9. In like manner provision is made for the advance- 
ment to the grade of master of the most efficient commis- 
sioned warrant officers. The board believes that the 



APPENDIX II 203 

principle of promotion by selection after fair competition 
should apply to their case as recommended for all other 
officers. As a further step, all masters who are qualified 
will enter the line or the various staff corps with the rank 
of lieutenant (junior grade), in the line of promotion. 
This is in addition to the opportunities now afforded by 
law. 

10. This board is directed by the precept creating it 
not to consider increases in the total number of officers 
now provided by law and to recommend as small increase 
in cost as may be practicable. After consideration of 
practically the entire history of personnel proposals and 
legislation, the board believe that it has arrived at a 
most economical plan to accomplish the purpose, although 
efficiency has been the primary consideration. 

11. Special attention is invited to the fact that any in- 
crease or decrease in the personnel which Congress may 
desire to make in the future can be effected without change 
in the general plan. 

12. To sum up: The bill provides for proper distribu- 
tion in grades, for uniform and fair promotion at proper 
ages, without material increase in cost. Detailed esti- 
mates of costj etc., and a discussion of the bill by para- 
graphs will appear as an appendix to this report. 

Franklin D. Roosevelt, 
Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Senior Member. 
Victor -Blue, 
Chief of Bureau of Navigation, Member. 
D. W. Taylor, 
Chief of Bureau of Construction and Repair, Member. 
C. M. Austin, 
Lieutenant, United States Navy, Recorder. 



APPENDIX III 

THE PRICE OF UNPREPAREDNESS 

The faulty military policy of the United States in re- 
fusing to keep a sufficiently large trained force of soldiers 
and upon the outbreak of war calling great numbers of un- 
trained recruits to the colors, has been the cause of vast 
expenditures. Thousands of men have been enlisted in 
even our smallest wars to serve for only a short time. 
The consequence has been that a great many more men 
have been risked in a war than really were necessary. 
These untried and untrained masses have been sent out 
to do battle, and have been slaughtered on every battle- 
field. Trained troops will stand until one-third have been 
annihilated, but untrained troops will break and run some- 
times at the first shot. This is the reason why great masses 
have been employed in our wars, and is the reason why 
the sum of our pensions has been so tremendous. The 
history of the sums expended by our government for 
pensions for each of our wars since 1790 spells a sad 
experience: 

The Revolutionary War $70,000,000 

The War of 1812 45,923,014 

The Indian Wars 12,241,273 

The War with Mexico 475632,572 

The Civil War 4,294,596,944 

The War with Spain and the Philippine Insurrection. 42,185,230 

Regular established and sundries 44,960,800 

$4,557,539,833 
204 



APPENDIX III 20s 

In 1866 there were 126,722 pensioners. In 1897, just 
before the war with Spain, there were 993,714 names on 
the pension roll. After the war with Spain, in 1902, this 
number had increased to 999,446, and that number is 
still increasing, although fifty years have passed since 
the Civil War was over, and the veterans of that struggle 
are to-day dying at the rate of 35,000 a year. 

It has cost the country, since 1866, $125,871,965 sim- 
ply to maintain the Bureau of Pensions through which 
the pensioners receive their money. This is the price 
we have already paid for non-preparation. 



